LRW

Team-Based Learning: Innovative Pedagogy in Legal Writing

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by Anne E. Mullins*

Team-Based Learning (TBL) has been used around the world in a variety of disciplines, such as medicine, nursing, business, sciences, math, education, and accounting.[1] TBL is a collaborative learning method that follows a sequence of individual work, followed by teamwork, followed by feedback.[2] The key components of TBL are (1) strategically formed, permanent teams, (2) the readiness assurance process, (3) team exercises, and (4) accountability.[3] This Article briefly reviews each of these components and describes how to implement them in a first-year legal writing course. Then, the Article will report on the triumphs and challenges of the TBL model in my own class. Others who are interested in transitioning to TBL should be able to use this Article as a starting place in their transition.

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Inspiring Great Writing in Law Students

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By Antonette Barilla*

Law schools, focused as they are on providing intense, specialized, professional training, might legitimately be accused of stifling the creativity and innovation that define brilliant writing. When it comes to law school writing, there are blueprints for nearly every type of composition—from case briefing and exam writing, to the design of legal memoranda and the outline for an oral argument. And while professors are experts at teaching students the requisite formulas, we, as practitioners and legal writing professionals, are not as adept at facilitating the development of good writing—writing that is unfettered by artificial legal formulas. We forget that anytime one writes, even in a personal capacity, they provide some measure into their competence as a professional. The intended audience of a letter to the editor, a blog post, holiday cards, hotel reviews, business proposals, letters to friends, etc. will develop an opinion about the writer’s skill, cleverness, values, and identity. Each time a law student or attorney commits his or her thoughts to words, they open their professional reputation to some level of evaluation.

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Teach a Law Student to Fish: A Tutor’s Perspective on Legal Writing

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By Kathleen Tarr*

[I]n a writing center, the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what get changed by instruction. In axiom form it goes like this: Our job is to produce better writers, not better writing.
– Stephen M. North[1]

There are common standards for tutoring practice in a writing center: share the space; let the student set the agenda; understand the assignment; give the student control; prioritize problems; get the student involved in solving the problem; get the student to write; respect and use the time; and, bring the session to a close. There is also an unwritten rule: never contradict the professor or the assignment. This latter standard is actually harder to meet than it might seem.

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A Rhetorical Exercise: Persuasive Word Choice*

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by Stephen E. Smith**

“The choice of appropriate and striking words has a marvellous power and an enthralling charm for the reader.”[1]

Persuasion can spring from many fonts: a sound argument, a sympathetic set of facts, even the good grooming of an oral advocate.[2] In writing a legal brief, word choice is an important persuasion tool. Through word choice, legal writers may characterize a party’s behavior, clarify a scene, or recast an interaction. For example, it is very different to describe an utterance as “offering a choice,” or “issuing an ultimatum.”

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