What do I mean by learning legal writing like a sport? I mean giving law students or bar candidates rapid practice, but for writing legal briefs and memos, not hitting tennis balls. Law students and bar candidates should get to practice researching, organizing, and writing law office tasks, over and over again, quickly. Building these skills will help junior lawyers not just on the bar exam but in law practice.
But, you may ask, how is this system different? Don't law schools already teach students how to write briefs and memos? Yes, indeed, law schools teach the theory and structure of briefs and memos very well, and many first-year students write one substantial brief and one substantial memo. But law schools don't give students enough repeated practice on short tasks so that students can develop strong habits. Law schools teach legal writing by what I call the "craft method," also called the "process method." A legal writing class works through each task step-by-step, from basic legal research to final section headings, with drafts and redrafts, and so every task takes weeks or months. In the end, students may write one excellent memo, but they have developed no habits, no visual memory, and no muscle memory.
New lawyers need strong habits. Law firms don't want associates who stare at the page trying to figure out what format to use, or who to need to design every part of a memo from scratch. So that's the sense in which I teach legal writing "like a sport(TM)." Using simplified exercises, students in my BarWrite® Boot Camps practice small numbers of skills over and over again. Thus, for me, teaching legal writing is like teaching someone to ride a bicycle or "shooting hoops." Working with the simplified, simulated, materials that the National Conference of Bar Examiners provides for the Multistate Bar Exam (MPT), and repeating each type of task several times, students in my classes develop habits for organizing, formatting, and finishing their work. They gain a sense of law-office tasks like memo-writing as having an internal structure, each one being a whole with component parts of limited scope and size, waiting to be completed within the limited time available.
I do not usually use this blog to talk about what I offer, but I must add here that my new book Perform Your Best on the Bar Exam Performance Test (MPT): Train to Finish the MPT in 90 Minutes "Like a Sport(TM)" has many virtues. It has a graphic system I devised for keeping track of all of the research on one page, called the MPT-Matrix(TM). And it does help students treat legal writing like a sport. It makes learning legal writing resemble hitting tennis balls or shooting hoops.
Students can use this book to develop good, strong habits. Those habits are invaluable in the performance part of the bar exam, whether the MPT or the California performance test. They are also invaluable in the practice of law. I cannot close without mentioning the fact that the book is available on Amazon. http://tinyurl.com/PerformYourBest.
Within the next few months, I'll publish another new book, but for practicing lawyers, using the materials from Perform Your Best, and teaching practicing lawyers how to write "Speed Memos" book. Watch for it.
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