Prepare an outline or overview of the document before beginning to draft, laying out all key points and arguments. If analyzing caselaw, consider: preparing a table of cases, summarizing each case’s ...

Good legal writing is a lot more than simply getting the law right. The year 2025 has been a very busy one for me in terms of drafting legal briefs on some issue or another. This means that not only ...

Legal Research and Writing (LRW) introduces students to the fundamentals of the legal system, structure of law-making bodies, sources of law; provides hands-on experiences in using legal analysis, ...

Across all industries and applications, effective writing shares key commonalities like clarity and connection. Writers seek to share powerful insights with audiences but can only do so by fully ...

Whether you are writing a brief, a research memorandum or a client report, what you write, and how you write it, communicates your ideas to your audience. Are your sentences wordy and rambling, or ...

In litigation, first impressions frequently are made through the written word. Professional, coherent and accurate writing is crucial to establishing a good reputation with the court, and ultimately ...

No prior reading is necessary, though a selection of legal writing (memo, brief, or opinion) could be helpful to their understanding. Discuss the general structure of legal writing: This exercise will ...

Earlier this year, a lawyer using ChatGPT for legal research filed a motion in federal court riddled with fake case citations. The saga ended in sanctions and served as a warning to the legal ...

Thirty-some years ago, American law schools reserved the study of in-ternational law for upper-level students, keeping the first year of law school focused on the traditional doctrinal subjects of ...

The Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of its groundbreaking journal and recognized Professor Michael R. Smith as a prime architect of its creation.