Lasorjet FTW

Our class has four grade categories (including fail).

I just got my first (of two) memos back. Got a 119/129, but had soooooo many stupid errors that I just didn't see like missing two periods, missing two parentheses, making a contraction, writing a word twice on accident, etc. And I proof-read the thing over and over. God I hate myself right now.

FTFY

In all seriousness though, curved LRW really does suck. I know Wisconsin curves the entire 1L class' legal writing in one big pool, which means that you are being curved against people in different classes, etc. There are protocols in place to ensure that certain profs don't eat up too much of either side of the curve, but it is still ridiculous. They end up giving essentially no As (3 in Spring 2009, for the entire 1L class) and no Cs, so that everything moves toward the median.

In the new edition of the ABA’s Student Lawyer magazine, there’s an article written by a writing prof. She was evaluating the writing samples submitted by associates at one of the largest and most prestigious firms. The examples were bad, to put it mildly. Maybe this explains the shift away from P/F writing classes.

Yeah. The irony about LRW is that it is one of the only classes that actually has anything to do with practicing law.

I'm on the not graded boat. I think a curve is absolutely ridiculous, and I think that graded-but-not-curved would have too many "nice v. mean professor" problems. Considering the impact 1L grades have, I think those kind of problems have to be eliminated wherever possible.

I feel like it would be best to have something between P/F and grades. Something like an Honors, Pass, and Fail. It's hard to motivate myself to work on this memo when I just have to finish the thing to pass, without even thinking about quality.

employers take writing VERY seriously. I have heard it's hard for people with 4.2 GPA with a single C in legal writing to get jobs. No judge will touch them, employers in general treat him them like 3.4 GPA.

Thats what we supposedly have, though I was just told the other day that it still shows up as only a P even if you earn honors. Even with the high pass option, Im still not very motivated lol

I am against curved LRWs as well. There's seriously no need for that. Good jobs get in the A range, OK in the B range, blow offs Cs or Ds. The writing professors should be told to be fairly generous. we shouldn't have a legal war over legal writing, especially since the legal writing crowd makes mountains out of mole hills. Oh god, the comma wasn't italicized! Sky is falling! They fight epic battles over stuff like whether to put citations in footnotes or in the text. Writing classes should be about improving your written work, not having a flipping shooting war over the thing.

Our writing professor occasionally decides to provide zero instruction on certain details, like whether to cite to the state reporter (as the textbook does) or the regional reporter (better), when citing a case, then waits for the whole class to get it wrong before pointing it out. It was p/f, but I imagine the 1 person who got it right would get buku bonus points. Details are important, but they shouldn't be hiding the ball over this sort of thing. It would be pretty lame if the curve fell along the lines of whoever had the idea of doing something that nobody ever had gotten instruction on.

You guys don't attend Cornell Law, do you?

The curve is the only thing that makes LW fair. Otherwise you'd have one prof giving mostly As and another giving mostly Bs. Maybe there just needs to be a "looser" curve in the LW classes; more As/Bs or more tightly compacted grades.


A lot of law school is about figuring things out for yourself. You shouldn't need instruction on how to cite if you're told where to find the answers (e.g., Bluebook/ALWD).

I'm glad my school has graded LRW. I know I wouldn't take it as seriously as I should if it weren't graded, and I feel like my writing has already gotten better and more precise since my first assignment. I think since it's graded, a curve is absolutely necessary. I've talked to classmates in different LRW classes whose professors are radically different, and that makes me glad that professors are forced to give out a certain number of As, Bs, and Cs. Otherwise I run the risk of having a professor who refuses to give any As when other classes have professors who try to give all As.

I disagree. If the substantive classes are curved, then LRW should be curved as well. Students who write tight prose and edit well should have a chance to trounce those entitled students who expect their LW professors to overlook their carelessly edited work.

You should know that I despise the curve. Because of it, I care more about exam performance than actual learning. I think law schools should eliminate the curve--in every class, not just LRW.

This is actually spot on. I got a B+ on my third memo, and was told I would have gotten an A if I'd fixed some formatting issues. On the other hand, this resulted from own carelessness so I can't really complain.

Structure matters a lot. I went from getting a B on my ungraded stuff to an A- on my first graded assignment because I followed the structure we were supposed to use instead of thinking this was one of those BS liberal arts papers you can just write as you go along according to your own structure. Obvious, I know, but it kinda goes to show how structure and clarity matters. Use whatever little acronym you are required to use rigidly (IRAC, CRAC, CREAC). Topic sentences. No extraneous words. Clear writing.

Another big (and obvious) thing, if your prof allows it, is to send drafts of sections to him or go into office hours. Getting inside the head of your professor is key. In my case, if I just relied on the assigned textbook, I would have done poorly, because legal writing grades are so subjective (esp if you have an adjunct who is a practicing lawyer with his own habits). There were so many little issues that my prof disagreed with the book on (esp because he didn't assign it, the LW program did). When it comes to grading time, he is going to go with what HE thinks is right, not the book.

Other than that, the final thing for me has been time. LW is one of those things where (usually), if you put in enough time, it pays off. I'm not naturally good at legal writing like some people, so I put days and days into editing. I still have two more assignments to go, so we'll see how well I do on those, but that's what I've figured out so far. The good thing about graded LW is that at least my writing has gotten a lot better and I've forced myself to drop a lot of bad habits.