Do You Play Offense or Defense?

I’m just finishing two weeks of conferences with my students; we have been working through the drafts of their first trial briefs.  One of the topics we have been talking about is how to effectively incorporate counter-analysis in a principal brief. 

Before we broke for conferences, we talked about counter-analysis in class.  I tried to impress upon students that they cannot be effective advocates simply by making their own affirmative arguments and ignoring their opponent’s likely arguments.  Instead, they need to anticipate their opponent’s likely arguments and address those arguments as well.  I get little to no push-back from the students on that point; they can see the benefit of trying to neutralize opposing arguments from the outset rather than allowing the opponent to control the arguments in the response brief. 

Where students and I sometimes disagree, however, is about how best to approach counter-analysis. 

Continue ReadingDo You Play Offense or Defense?

Dollars and Sense

I was scanning the Legal Writing Prof Blog this afternoon, and I noticed a post stating that, in an effort to save money, one large law firm is now requiring its attorneys to use Loislaw, rather than Lexis or Westlaw, for some of their research.  Evidently, the firm has imposed a three-part policy:

  • All non-billable legal research involving case law, statutes, or regulations at both the state and federal level should first be performed using Loislaw.
  • Loislaw should also be used for billable research where appropriate, resulting in a much lower cost to the client.
  • If additional research is required on Lexis or Westlaw, that research must be billed to a client/matter.

This post raised two issues for me.  First, it made me think about what sources I should be including in my first-year courses.

Continue ReadingDollars and Sense

Show and Tell

 

I have a confession to make:  I am something of a PowerPoint addict.  I have a second confession to make:  I am aware that not all of my PowerPoint presentations are as effective as I would like them to be.  Having been in the audience during many PowerPoint presentations, I know that slides with too much text are ineffective, and I also know that nothing is more boring than listening to someone read from his or her slides.  Thus, over the past few years, I have tried to make my slides more audience-friendly by reducing the amount of text that I display and increasing the number of visuals.  

I made those changes after doing some reading about learning styles and how the brain processes information.  Though this is a huge oversimplification, I learned that the brain processes verbal and visual information through separate channels, so if we present students with both kinds of information, we can help them improve comprehension.   Other than in Property and Estates and Trusts, when I remember my professors diagramming future interests on the chalkboard, I don’t remember having visuals in my law school classes.  (The fact that I remember those diagrams almost 15 years after my law school graduation probably says something about why I now use visuals in my classes.)

Continue ReadingShow and Tell