NAAC Team Advances to Octofinals

IMG956734After three rounds of oral argument at the National Appellate Advocacy Competition (NAAC) regional in Brooklyn, New York, this weekend, Marquette University Law School students Michael Crane (3L), and Samantha Evei (3L) were 2-1 and seeded thirteenth out of 33 teams.  Crane and Evei advanced to the octofinals, but unfortunately lost a very close match to another team. Sam Berg (3L) was also a member of the team and wrote the team’s brief. Attorneys (and former NAAC competitors) Alyssa Dowse and Lindsey Greenawald coached the team.

Michael Beckman (3L) and Zachary Wittchow (3L) also competed in the Brooklyn regional, facing tough competition.  Their team was coached by attorneys Jesse Blocher and Michael Cerjak. Professor Lisa Mazzie is the faculty advisor for both teams.

The NAAC is sponsored by the American Bar Association Law Student Division.

 

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“The Government” as a Negative Label?

labels-vAs we who teach legal analysis and writing teach students how to make the switch from objective to persuasive writing, we often talk about the little things that students can do to their briefs more persuasive.

One fairly obvious technique is for the writer to carefully choose how she wants to label the parties. Calling one party “the Defendant” rather than by his or her given name, for example, tends to de-personalize the defendant. Calling a business entity “the Company,” “the Firm,” or “the Corporation” may trigger for readers certain images or feelings, some of which may be negative. And that may be just what the writer wants if the writer represents a plaintiff alleging a wrong against an impersonal entity. Or, depending on context, maybe those designations are the quickest, easiest way to refer to one of the parties.

But who knew that “the Government” would be considered to a label to avoid—by the government itself?

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Logos, Ethos, and Pathos in Persuasive Writing

aristotleIn the second semester of their first year, students make the switch from objective to persuasive writing. It’s a switch that some students welcome because they like the idea of arguing a position rather than having to be objective. As students learn, though, there’s more to persuasive writing—or at least more to good persuasive writing—than just arguing a position.

At their core, objective and persuasive legal writing share many of the same traits, such as maintaining the small scale organizational paradigm we refer to as CREAC (a/k/a IRAC). Because lawyers use that paradigm to advance their arguments, students need to master it, which makes the structure of the argument look similar to objective writing. But students need to make other, subtler changes in their writing (and thinking) to persuade effectively. It’s often challenging to succinctly explain these more subtle differences, but one easy way is to introduce the “why” behind the differences, which in turn helps explain those differences. Good persuasive writing argues a position by using a combination of three ancient rhetorical techniques: logos, ethos, and pathos.

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