Year One

A Focus on Skills Development

The first-year course, LR&W I & II, is a year-long, four-credit class. It focuses on developing and refining these skills:

• Legal analysis
• Legal research, both in print sources and on-line
• Objective, predictive legal writing.

The goal in each semester is to teach the skill, critique the skill, and then grade the skill. Individual conferences and rewrites are hallmarks of the first-year writing program.

You will work on a series of increasingly complex research and writing projects, i.e., legal memoranda and opinion letters.

The first two projects in the first semester are "closed universe"; they are fully critiqued by the instructors, but are not assigned a grade. Both projects emphasize legal analysis.

You will then be assigned at least one open research memo that is fully critiqued, but not graded in that semester.

A final open research memo in the first semester is fully graded.

Second-semester work will focus on more complex resources, such as constitutional provisions, statutes, legislative history, and administrative regulations.

You will write two open memos on complex issues and an opinion letter based on one of your memos. The final memo is graded.

At the end of each semester, you will take a graded research test. Throughout the year, you will write shorter pieces and keep research journals that are critiqued by the teachers.