Program Overview
As a first-year student at the University of Wisconsin Law School, you will have an engaging and challenging experience, both in your substantive courses and in your research and writing courses. While careful research and clear and succinct writing may have been required of you before, legal research and writing methods are unique to the legal profession and will require significant new learning.
This new learning is essential to success in law school and in the legal profession. A student who masters the analytic skills taught in substantive courses needs to take the next step and articulate that analysis in writing. The Legal Research and Writing Program, which is part of our Communication & Advocacy Program, guides you in that process through small classes taught by experienced faculty drawn from the legal profession. They are fully aware of what the profession requires of researchers and writers. You will learn by doing. The writing problems you use are reality based and require you to perform the tasks you will face in law school and in your employment during and after law school.
Throughout the program, you receive all the personalized attention you want or need. Our legal research and writing classes are small (11 to 15 students), feedback from teachers is extensive, and learning is hands-on. The law school offers additional individualized instruction to any student who wants more guidance about how to be a successful legal researcher and writer.
Program Description
The University of Wisconsin's Legal Research and Writing Program begins immediately in the fall semester to give you the tools you'll need to put the law into action. The first-year program introduces you to the broad concepts central to legal research and writing and teaches you practical techniques so you can apply those concepts throughout your career. The program is designed to help you deepen your understanding of the law as you use your research and writing skills to solve legal problems. Legal Writing: The Legal Research and Writing Program focuses on three fundamental concepts of good legal writing: accuracy, accessibility, and professionalism.
Applying these concepts, you'll learn to:
- research, analyze, and express law and facts accurately and completely;
- organize and write so the content can be read easily and quickly; and
- communicate respect for the reader and profession through details such as tone, format, and grammar.
Research: The first-year program also will teach you to use language and research tools, understand those tools, and build a solid foundation throughout your legal education and future career.
Specifically, the Legal Research and Writing Program will teach you to:
- identify potential legal issues in a given factual situation;
- discriminate among different sources of law;
- find and update legal authorities relevant to those issues;
- read and understand those various legal authorities;
- analyze and synthesize those authorities to discern various possible interpretations;
- evaluate those interpretations;
- apply those interpretations to the facts to answer legal questions;
- organize answers to meet the needs of various readers;
- write clearly, adapting as needed to communicate to various readers; and
- begin developing an effective personal research and writing process.
The First-Year Legal Research & Writing Courses
Legal Research and Writing I is a one-credit, fall semester course in which you will work on five aspects particularly important in legal writing: research, analysis, organization, writing, and citation.
Legal Research and Writing II is a two-credit, spring semester course with an emphasis on feedback and the revision process. In this course, you will prepare two drafts of a research memo, write and rewrite a persuasive document to the court, and present an oral argument.You will also receive a short assignment that introduces you to a different form of writing; this assignment may be a letter to a client, a complaint to be filed in court, a jury instruction, a contract clause, or a set of interrogatories.
Second- and Third-Year Courses
The University of Wisconsin Law School recognizes that law is "a profession of words." Our curriculum offers many opportunities for students to write and receive feedback on their writing. In addition to specific advanced writing and drafting courses, many of our seminars include writing opportunities. Clinical courses provide another opportunity for extensive writing experience as do our law journals. For more information about our emphasis on communication skills, read about our Communication & Advocacy Program.
For more information about the UW Law School's Legal Research and Writing Program, contact Professor Susan Steingass.