Lawyer as Writer
Course Syllabus
Fall, 2000
"Lawyer
as Writer" is a workshop rather than a survey course. Consequently,
we will spend our time writing, editing, and talking about writing rather
than conducting a historical (or contemporary) survey of the kind of
writing lawyers do and the quality of that writing.
The fundamental assumption in this course is that good writing and developing
a sense of oneself as a writer is fungible, that is, transferable from
one kind of writing to another. This assumption, I should point out,
runs counter to the assumption of most legal writing programs that legal
writing is a technical art and must be learned as such. Consequently,
there will be no effort in this course to focus on or limit our attention
to the specific forms of writing that lawyers devote their attention.
The work of this course consists of writing. We will experiment with
doing some writing and editing in class.
We
will spend some time talking about legal writing and the special problems
it poses. We will work with legal writings you have already produced
for that part of the course and try to use what we are doing in the
course as the basis for a strategy to be more effective in your legal
writing.
One
problem of writing courses is that you are asked to do writing exercises
and the only audience for your writing is the course instructor. Writing
workshops often extend the audience to fellow participants in the workshop
and we are going to follow this "workshop model" in this course. Be
advised: Your writings in this course will be shared with colleagues
unless you specifically direct otherwise.
The
assigned book for the course is Peter Elbow, Writing With Power:
Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2nd ed., 1998) (1981). There are enough books on writing to fill
a small home library, and while I've read a significant number of them,
none quite equal Peter Elbow's Writing With Power. Elbow, as
most writer instructors, has his own views about what stands in the
way of our efforts to write. I've learned a great deal from Elbow, and
will make substantial use of his ideas in the course. Again, you should
be forewarned; Elbow's ideas often run counter to what you have been
taught about legal writing in law school. There is a course Web site
and you will be expected to make use of it during the course of the
semester. Writing assignments and communications to course participants
will be posted on the Web site.
.
Home Page
|