Focusing on improving writing skills in both assignments and exams, this text uses worked examples and exercises to provide students with the skills needed for successful legal writing.
This work is a practical legal analysis and writing handbook. Designed for first-year students, it is also a valuable refresher text for more advanced students, and for practitioners. This easy-to-read book features fundamental advice on how to communicate written and oral legal analysis from a problem-solving perspective. It features illustrative examples and templates. The fifth edition includes additional examples and models, and appendices with practice exercises and sample answers, all created in collaboration between one author with recent practice experience and one who has been teaching for over twenty years. It also incorporates professional ethical and technological considerations throughout, while providing learning objectives for each chapter.
With a practical focus on persuasive writing strategies, Advanced Legal Writing: Theory and Strategies in Persuasive Writing explores three classical techniques: logos, pathos, and ethos, and provides students with a thorough introduction to the elements of rhetorical style. Unlike many other advanced legal writing texts, which tend to focus on a document-specific approach, this unique coursebook focuses on classical writing strategies that students can apply to a wide range of settings. The depth and scope of this text make it appropriate for upper-level legal writing courses. The Third Edition has been expanded to include the use of movies and other popular culture media in chapters dealing with literary references. There have also been substantial revisions to the chapter on policy. Features: Comprehensive coverage of the technical aspects of rhetorical style: metaphor, literary allusion, and figures of speech. Emphasizes theory as well as practice, building on three basic strategies of persuasive legal writing: Logos: Logic and rational argument. o Pathos: Value-based argument. Ethos: Establishing credibility. Highlights interdisciplinary contributions to persuasive writing from diverse fields, including cognitive psychology, classical rhetoric, and morality theory. Presents effective strategies that extend beyond the trial or appellate brief to a broad range of documents and settings. Covers new developments in cognitive psychology, pathos, persuasion, and the role of metaphor in persuasive legal writing. Depth and scope appropriate for upper-level legal writing classes. Thoroughly updated, the revised Third Edition offers: Substantial revisions to the chapter on policy. Expanded chapters on literary references now include other media, e.g., movies and other pop culture platforms.
With examples drawn from legal writing and student papers, this guide walks students through the writing process and helps them refine their skills in exercises throughout the book. The Second Edition features a reorganized Part I, including three new chapters that help students gain proficiency in reading and analyzing legal materials so they can write more effectively. Part II includes a systematic approach to legal writing; understanding your context; getting organized; writing clearly; writing effectively; and reviewing and editing. Part III covers the process of writing a legal memorandum and an appellate court brief. This Second Edition includes two examples of memoranda, An interoffice memo and a memo of points and authority; a streamlined appendix that provides an overview of English sentence structure; and many enhanced writing exercises.
“This easy-to-follow guide is useful both as a general course of instruction and as a targeted aid in solving particular legal writing problems.” —Harvard Law Review Clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful—all too often, legal writing embodies none of these qualities. Its reputation for obscurity and needless legalese is widespread. For more than twenty years, Bryan A. Garner’s Legal Writing in Plain English has helped address this problem by providing lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The leading guide to clear writing in the field, this indispensable volume encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process that will appeal to other professionals: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. Accessible and witty, Legal Writing in Plain English draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through decades of teaching. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting, and the book’s principles are reinforced by sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section. In this new edition, Garner preserves the successful structure of the original while adjusting the content to make it even more classroom-friendly. He includes case examples from the past decade and addresses the widespread use of legal documents in electronic formats. His book remains the standard guide for producing the jargon-free language that clients demand and courts reward. “Those who are willing to approach the book systematically and to complete the exercises will see dramatic improvements in their writing.” —Law Library Journal
Written for every law student who ever wondered how to get better grades in law school, How to Write Law Exams: IRAC Perfected provides students of all levels with a detailed, comprehensive, and practical guide to success on law school exams. What's more, How to Write Law Exams applies equally to all subject matters, making this text an ideal supplement for every law school course. Focuses on law school and bar exams rather than the kind of assignments seen in legal writing class. As such, the book helps students improve their grades in all of their substantive courses, not just in their first year legal writing class. Provides readers with a proven and easy-to-implement means of maximizing points on a law school exam. Rather than repeating vague generalities about grammar and style or providing simple bullet-point lists as other writing guides do, this text breaks the well-known IRAC method of legal writing into comprehensible segments and gives students the tools needed to master their law exams. Provides readers with detailed student-written examples of the IRAC method in action. Annotated with line-by-line critiques, these sample essays show readers exactly what can go wrong in a law school exam and how to fix those problems before they appear on a graded paper. Combining in-depth analysis, easy-to-understand writing, and innovative design features, How to Write Law Exams: IRAC Perfected is the answer to every law student's exam questions.
This book hits the sweet spot between books that focus only on briefs and books that try to do too much. Expertly written and constructed by Mary Beth Beazley and Monte Smith, Briefs and Beyond: Persuasive Legal Writing gives law professors options to supplement a persuasive writing course with complaints, demand letters, and other persuasive documents while not overwhelming their students. Professors and student will benefit from: A behavioral approach to legal writing A focus on how documents look as well as what they say Sidebars that answer students’ common questions as they go along Effective formulas for legal writing that ease the writing process Many examples of both good and bad writing throughout that illustrate concepts covered in the text