Nearly every type of legal job involves written communication, and that’s one reason law professors recommend that law school applicants choose a school that emphasizes legal writing.
“In all practices of law, you’re going to be writing. You’re going to be writing emails and contracts, as well as litigation documents,” says Kirsten Davis, professor of law and director of the Institute for the Advancement of Legal Communication at Stetson University‘s law school.
Amanda Ellis-Cuban, senior vice president of the legal staffing firm Special Counsel, says it’s common for legal employers in writing-intensive law fields, like appellate practice and commercial litigation, to require job applicants to submit writing samples.
She says strong writing abilities can help entry-level legal job seekers stand out from their peers, particularly in practice areas that involve submitting briefs, motions and other formal legal documents. “It’s highly critical in those practice areas,” she says.
[View the U.S. News ranking of legal writing programs.]
Natalia Reyna-Pimiento, a native Spanish speaker and judicial law clerk who received her J.D. from Stetson University in May, says legal writing courses helped her boost her English-language writing abilities.
But she says even law school applicants who aren’t concerned about language barriers should investigate whether a law school offers an abundance of legal writing courses.
“Legal writing is absolutely essential,” she says. “That is how we communicate as attorneys.”
Reyna-Pimiento says a lack of legal writing skills can stifle a legal career. “It is going to show,” she says. “Your clients are going to notice, and the courts are going to notice it.”
Here are three signs experts say indicate a law school offers exceptional training in legal writing.
1. Upper-level writing courses: Schools with strong legal writing programs offer not only a required, introductory legal writing course but also numerous upper-division electives on this topic, experts say.
“Many, many schools have a course in the first year and have little true upper-division legal writing programming that’s taught by legal writing professors,” says Mary Bowman, associate professor at the Seattle University School of Law and director of its legal writing program, the No. 1 best legal writing program. “Schools will satisfy the upper-division writing requirement by having doctrinal faculty teach a paper class.”
Davis of Stetson University says upper-division electives in legal writing are essential, because these courses show students how to apply legal writing skills within specific legal disciplines. So, for instance, these electives could focus on contract drafting, judicial writing or appellate brief composition, she says.
Bowman adds that although the experience of writing an academic paper about a legal discipline can be useful, it is essential to practice producing the types of documents that lawyers create on a daily basis, such as client memos.
“Legal writing courses are a place in the curriculum where you are making the transition between being a student learning the law to being able to do real lawyering,” Davis explains.
[Learn how to read and write like a law school student.]
2. Full-time faculty with published scholarship about legal writing: One way to determine whether a law school is invested in its legal writing department is to look for full-time writing professors, experts say. It’s also important to see whether the legal writing faculty has published papers on what makes legal writing compelling.
Bowman says faculty who have studied which aspects of legal writing are most essential for clarity and persuasiveness are the best equipped to give writing advice.
[Evaluate professors to find a good law school fit.]
3. Opportunities to master writing skills: Experts say it’s best to attend a school with a variety of writing-related extracurricular opportunities, such as moot court competitions, law journals and writing workshops.
Likewise, consider schools with courses that require writing for legal clients or that use real court records as the basis of assignments, Bowman says.
“Legal practice is so much messier than what you do in a traditional, controlled legal writing program,” she says.
Davis says aspiring attorneys should look for schools where they will have numerous opportunities to master legal writing skills.
She notes, “Improving as a writer requires getting feedback and having opportunities to practice the skill.”
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Assess the Quality of a Law School’s Legal Writing Program originally appeared on usnews.com
