Course Overview
Your Legal Research & Writing course introduces the foundational skills necessary for success in all law practice settings. It is a two-semester course. The Fall semester will focus on objective legal writing. The Spring semester will focus on persuasive legal writing and oral advocacy. Throughout the academic year, you will develop your skills in legal analysis, writing, research, citation, grammar, oral advocacy, and professionalism.
These skills are distinctly interconnected, leaving us with a lot of ground to cover in the first semester. You cannot write well without locating correct legal authorities to shape that analysis accurately and comprehensively. No matter how well you write, you also need to submit documents on time and in the correct format expected by the court or your supervisor. Even the most sophisticated legal analysis demands polished citations so that your readers can engage with the authority directly. As with learning any skill – from a sport to an instrument to a new language – success comes with practice, reflection, and engagement. These skills gradually become more comfortable and organic as you practice, eventually leading to “unconscious competence” where you automatically research, draft, cite, and format with fluidity.
We will rigorously develop these skills over the academic year with a collaborative team of full-time faculty, adjunct faculty, Classroom Dean’s Fellows, and Writing Dean’s Fellows supporting you. We will work in small sections to give individualized feedback and support. Collectively, our full-time faculty bring decades of experience teaching, practicing law, training law offices, and publishing. Our adjunct faculty are uniquely sophisticated and experienced as teachers and practitioners throughout our nation’s capital. They include judges, law partners, general counsel, government lawyers, law clerks, and non-profit leaders. Our Pence Law Library Faculty are vital partners in teaching research skills. Our Dean’s Fellows are accomplished upper-level students committed to your success, and they are savvy to the day-to-day realities of how the first-year curriculum prepares you for academic and professional achievement.
The most important partner in this collaboration is you! We invite you to bring a strong growth mindset to actualizing your own knowledge, skills, and values. We all work collaboratively to navigate a curriculum that is unified in standards, expectations, and rigor within classrooms that are individualized and diverse in experiences, styles, and perspectives.
These foundational skills will carry you throughout your law career. You will further refine and develop these skills at WCL in your upper-level writing requirement, clinical offerings, job placements, and other courses. You will also customize and refine these skills throughout your career in your area of specialization and practice setting. It is worth the time investment now to build enduring habits, skills, and values that will prepare you for a successful and satisfying law career.