{"id":23084,"date":"2014-08-17T15:41:58","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T20:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=23084"},"modified":"2014-08-17T15:55:04","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T20:55:04","slug":"an-interview-with-professor-jake-carpenter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2014\/08\/an-interview-with-professor-jake-carpenter\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Professor Jake Carpenter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Carpenter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Editor\u2019s Note: This blog is the\u00a0fourth in a <\/em>series<\/em><\/a> of interviews with faculty and staff at the Law School.]<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Professor Carpenter teaches Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research courses at Marquette Law School. Outside of the law school, Professor Carpenter presents\u00a0at writing conferences across the country, teaches Continuing Legal Education courses for the Illinois Attorney General’s offices in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, and co-teaches a course, Writing Persuasive Briefs, for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA). Professor Carpenter is also active on various committees of the Legal Writing Institute.\u00a0 Before teaching, Professor Carpenter was a civil litigator.<\/p>\n

Prior to practicing law, Professor Carpenter was a member of the law review and graduated with honors from Mercer University School of Law. At Mercer, he\u00a0received the Woodruff Scholarship, the law school’s top scholarship award.\u00a0Professor Carpenter graduated with honors from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.\u00a0While at DePauw, Carpenter was named an All-American in track.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Question: How did you first become interested in teaching legal writing?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I became interested in legal writing when I started practicing law and learned how much of a daily, critical role writing plays in a lawyer\u2019s job.\u00a0 Fortunately, I had some colleagues in my firm who were great attorneys, great writers, and great mentors.\u00a0 I often saw the difference a strong brief made compared to a poorly written brief, and I began to view writing briefs as a fun challenge.\u00a0 After gaining confidence and experience, I began to really enjoy all aspects of writing briefs.\u00a0 When I decided to pursue teaching at a law school, I wanted to teach legal writing courses because researching and writing briefs were what I enjoyed most about practicing law.\u00a0 I wanted to help students develop in those areas because it’s such an integral part of practicing law.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Question: What is your favorite brief writing tip?<\/strong>
\nMy favorite writing tip in general is as follows: with every paragraph and sentence you write, go back over it asking yourself \u201chow can I say this in a way that\u2019s easiest for the reader to understand?\u201d\u00a0 Always thinking about the reader is really important.\u00a0 Your number one job in a brief is to educate the judge about the facts, the law, and why the outcome being sought is justified.\u00a0 The attorney who can write about a large volume of complicated information in a straightforward, concise, engaging, and easy to understand way always has the upper hand.\u00a0 To accomplish this, you always have to be testing what you wrote with the reader in mind.<\/p>\n

My favorite writing tip for entering 1Ls is to not try to copy the style used in many of the cases you will read this year.\u00a0 Many of those cases were written 100 years ago with a writing style that is dense, convoluted, and full of legalese.\u00a0 If you have to read a case, paragraph, or sentence more than once (which you will find yourself doing over and over), it\u2019s often not because the underlying concept is extremely difficult–instead, it\u2019s because the writing was bad.\u00a0 While the underlying doctrines those cases establish are important, the legal writing style used in many of those cases is the opposite of how good lawyers write today.\u00a0 Even Chief Justice John Roberts has said that law students’ writing worsens in the first month of law school because they mistakenly think “writing like a lawyer” means to write in the outdated style that the casebook cases were written in.<\/p>\n

Question: In addition to teaching memo and brief writing, you teach an upper-level contract drafting course.\u00a0 What similarities and differences do you see in the approach to brief writing versus contract drafting?<\/strong>
\nThe main similarity is that, whether you are writing a brief or drafting a contract, your goal is to educate the reader and to make it easy for the reader to understand.\u00a0 Though a contract looks different from a brief, in both you use many of the same techniques to make your writing clear, concise, and precise.<\/p>\n

While clear, concise, precise communication is the goal with both, the overall task when writing a brief differs greatly from drafting a contract.\u00a0 When writing a brief, the attorney comes in after there has been a dispute and tries to resolve it.\u00a0 The attorney takes the existing facts and law, as they were, and tries to make the best out of them.\u00a0 On the other hand, when drafting a contract the attorney does the opposite:\u00a0 the attorney learns what the client wants to happen and then creates the law (the contract) that will control.\u00a0 If done well, a well-written contract can preclude many disputes from occurring.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Brief writing is backward looking, while contract drafting is forward looking.<\/p>\n

Question: What is your favorite contract drafting tip?<\/strong>
\nLearn how to use forms properly.\u00a0 Contract drafting does not equal copying a form.\u00a0 Attorneys who draft contracts use forms regularly to help them generate ideas and get started, but their final product will often be significantly different from the form off of which it\u00a0was based.\u00a0 If you use a form, always assume you will need to revise it by using your own language, reorganizing it, adding provisions, removing provisions, etc.\u00a0 Forms are a great resource if used as a guide, but simply copying a form without giving it a lot of independent thought can easily lead to malpractice.<\/p>\n

Question: What\u2019s your go-to editing or style manual?<\/strong>
\nEither A Writer\u2019s Reference,<\/em> by Diana Hacker, or The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style<\/em>, by Bryan Garner.<\/p>\n

Question: When you\u2019re not teaching legal writing, what hobbies occupy your time?<\/strong>
\nI have three kids, so any spare time I have is typically spent spending time with them or watching them in their activities.\u00a0 Adopting my kids\u2019 hobbies and spending time with them is what I enjoy the most at this point in my life.\u00a0 Hobbies I used to have, which I still try to do when I can, include making furniture, watching sports, mountain biking, playing basketball, spending time up north, traveling to national parks, watching movies with my wife, reading, and listening to music late at night when everyone else has gone to bed.<\/p>\n

Question: Who is your favorite author?\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRaymond Carver<\/p>\n

Question: What is your favorite band?<\/strong>
\nThe Samples, and Pearl Jam<\/p>\n

Question: Who has\u00a0influenced your professional career?<\/strong>
\nSeveral people, but the person who has probably led most directly to me being a writing professor is Andrea Sununu, my British Writers professor in college.\u00a0 At the time, I disliked English classes, and I took British Writers just to fulfill a requirement, excited that it would be my last English class ever.\u00a0 But Prof. Sununu completely changed the way I viewed writing.\u00a0 After that course, I ended up majoring in English and loving the challenge writing presents.\u00a0 I have never met a person who was more dedicated and harder working than Prof. Sununu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Editor\u2019s Note: This blog is the\u00a0fourth in a series of interviews with faculty and staff at the Law School.] Professor Carpenter teaches Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research courses at Marquette Law School. Outside of the law school, Professor Carpenter presents\u00a0at writing conferences across the country, teaches Continuing Legal Education courses for the Illinois Attorney General’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marquette-law-school","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}