I TA'd LRW and 1L moot court, I've been involved with a number of moot court/mock trial comps, and I've had interns from across the preftige spectrum.bruinfan10 wrote:I TA'd legal writing at a T14. Almost half of the 1Ls were laughably bad by the low-bar standard of lawyer writing; they would without a doubt have finished bottom of the pack in my top-10 undergrad English program, which itself wasn't particularly rigorous. A high percentage of the students came from Ivy's or fancy east coast liberal arts schools, but they were in majors like History or Poli Sci that don't focus on the mechanics of good writing whatsoever. Most lawyers are terrible writers for a reason.hiima3L wrote:LJL at this.cookiejar1 wrote: You get a class of, what, 20+ students who already are competent writers by virtue of them being at a top law school.
The overwhelming majority (80%+) of 1Ls are god awful writers. Hell, the majority of law students and lawyers are not good writers. The only 1Ls/rising 2Ls I've dealt with who were good were either paralegals before law school or are the lucky few who just get it. Legal writing is a learned skill with, IMO, little to no correlation to school rank, grades, intelligence, etc.
