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I seem to have trouble with the word count my school has put on LRW submissions. I think our department is pretty bad, but I want to know about everyone else.

Also please post something about your school whether region or ranking range.

I'll say yes at a midwestern school.

of course there should be a word count (i know this isn't the question). a large part of LRW is about learning to write well (which means in a concise manner lol). short of extreme examples, you can ALWAYS cut your paper down and NOT suffer in quality. it makes writing difficult, sure, but it also makes you a better writer.

sorry, i am a bit ornery on this subject after reading the thread by the HYS poster who failed LRW because he couldn't get his paper in under the limit after multiple attempts. it is just dumb imo.

Get used to it.

Every court in the country has local rules that set forth page/word limits on briefs. This is why LRW has the same.

At my school (OSU), our legal writing professor just placed the hypothetical case in one of the district courts and our briefs had to comply with whatever rules that court had, and it was on us to look them up. Not that hard really. The key is not to procrastinate* so that you have time to edit.


* - I concede I'm unable to not procrastinate, but do as I say, not as I do

I answered yes, but I want to clarify. We did not have a word limit. Rather, we had a page limit along with set font/spacing/marging requirements. It effectively created a word count, but was not exactly a word count.

We have page limits with a set font and margin size.

AlexanderSupertramp wrote:We have page limits with a set font and margin size.

ditto. it's always easy to get to trim stuff off if you're having a problem OP. My paper was 10.5 pages, and after meeting with my prof, it is now a bit under 9.

..

Yes, sorry, to clarify, my post and vote were directed to word counts and/or page limits. They effectively function as the same thing so I treated them the same (and assumed the OP did as well).