Workshop for Beginning Legal Writing Teachers - AALS

Workshop for Beginning Legal Writing Teachers
relevant to distinguish Mr. Pemberque’s background from that of Lewis Lani, it
may be too risky to rely on the court finding that Mr. Lani did not reasonably fear
that Mr. Pemberque intended to injure him.
__________,
Overall, nice job with this draft. The overall organization is good; the
section starts with specific rules, then gives analogous case information, and
then goes through the arguments for each side, and ends with a mini-conclusion,
just as it should be in the script format. You’ve also done a very nice job in really
wrestling with a variety of factual details from our case; it’s always important to
focus on our facts, but that’s particularly true with a totality of the circumstances
analysis like this one. The draft also has some good comparisons between our
facts and the analogous case. And the writing mechanics are generally polished
as well, which helps establish your credibility. As you revise, though, focus in
particular on the following things:
� First, make sure that the reader thoroughly understands the relevant law
before you get into the argument paragraphs. If there are any other useful
analogous cases to give the reader a more complete picture of the law,
bring those in. If not, at least make sure that your analogous case
description contains all the key points/concepts that you want to use for
your arguments later.
� With respect to the arguments, make sure that they are organized around
legal concepts or points, not just narrow facts. Try to make the topic
sentences of each argumentative assertion more principle based (e.g. Mr.
Pemberque seemed to target Mr. Lani, instead of he knew about his
schedule, or because the victim’s characteristics made him particularly
vulnerable, rather than mentioning age or developmental delays). If you
organize the arguments around concepts, that will help you make some of
the comparisons clearer, and it may also help you combine paragraphs –
some of the paragraphs here seem to relate to the same point, but using
different facts. Organize by point, not by fact.
� Finally, work on conciseness. That section in the LWH has good
information about making sure that you make each point once (macrolevel
conciseness), and it also has good information about helping you get
rid of unnecessary words within individual sentences. The writing will be
clearer and easier to follow if it is tightened up in both those ways.
Overall, though, good start.
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Comment [MNB30]: This wording is hard to
follow.