Schiess continues to avoid blame for students' poor writing
Sometimes a non-legal-writing law professor--a doctrinal professor--will tell me that law students' writing skills are poor. In the last post, I gave some reasons the law professor might be wrong. In this post, I give some reasons the law professor might be right.
"Law students' writing skills are poor."
When a non-legal-writing law professor says this, here are some possible explanations:
1. The statement is true because--
a. The first-year LRLW course is not adequately training students in the fundamentals of legal writing.
b. The first-year LRLW course could adequately train students in the fundamentals of legal writing, but the course logistics (large class, few credits) sap student motivation.
c. The first-year LRLW course is not adequately training students in the writing skills the students need for exams and seminar papers--the things they write for non-legal-writing classes. In other words, the first-year LRLW course can barely cover new vocabulary, new conventions, new types of documents (memos and briefs), new analytical skills, and legal research, so it can't ever get to the skills law professors are looking for on exams and in seminar papers.
d. The students enter law school with poor writing skills, and the first-year LRLW course can't overcome that.
e. Educational standards--particularly for writing--are declining, and every new generation of law students is is little dumber, lazier, and sloppier than the previous.
Wayne Schiess
Director of Legal Writing | The University of Texas School of Law | Website | Seminars | Articles | Books: Preparing Legal Documents Nonlawyers Can Read and Understand | Better Legal Writing | Writing for the Legal Audience | The Legal Memo: A Basic Guide
"Law students' writing skills are poor."
When a non-legal-writing law professor says this, here are some possible explanations:
1. The statement is true because--
a. The first-year LRLW course is not adequately training students in the fundamentals of legal writing.
b. The first-year LRLW course could adequately train students in the fundamentals of legal writing, but the course logistics (large class, few credits) sap student motivation.
c. The first-year LRLW course is not adequately training students in the writing skills the students need for exams and seminar papers--the things they write for non-legal-writing classes. In other words, the first-year LRLW course can barely cover new vocabulary, new conventions, new types of documents (memos and briefs), new analytical skills, and legal research, so it can't ever get to the skills law professors are looking for on exams and in seminar papers.
d. The students enter law school with poor writing skills, and the first-year LRLW course can't overcome that.
e. Educational standards--particularly for writing--are declining, and every new generation of law students is is little dumber, lazier, and sloppier than the previous.
Wayne Schiess
Director of Legal Writing | The University of Texas School of Law | Website | Seminars | Articles | Books: Preparing Legal Documents Nonlawyers Can Read and Understand | Better Legal Writing | Writing for the Legal Audience | The Legal Memo: A Basic Guide
I have two questions and a comment.
I'm at my first real-lawyer job, and I'm writing lots of memos. I'm not sure they're being read. How do I (a) write a memo that's going to be read (add a catchy title? create office buzz?) and (b) get feedback on it? If it's a good memo, I want someone to read it, because I want to get whatever it is that you get when you do a good job. I want feedback so that I don't keep making the same mistakes.
Wayne says:
(a) To write a memo that's going to be read, write the entire thing carefully and thoroughly and then add a clear but thorough summary up front and label it "Summary." Don't worry about writing a summary of several paragraphs if that's what it takes.
(b) In 3 years at a law firm, where I wrote dozens of memos, I got feedback on exactly 2. One was red-ink comments all over my memo, and one was on oral "good job." I asked the firm's writing adviser (who was in another city) for feedback on my writing twice and never got any. So what I'm saying is that law firms aren't that great at giving young lawyers writing comments. The best I can suggest is that you ask and follow up if that request doesn't produce results.
Chris continues:
And I'll add this comment: I was so flummoxed by legal research my first semester that I couldn't focus on the writing. A student is never going to think they've really finished researching a topic. It's hard to write well if you don't have confidence in your subject matter (the seemingly unfinished research), and feedback on sub-standard work is not always teaching for/considered by a student.
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One more thing. Students don't have much to go by. When I was in Legal Writing, I really wanted a few dozen examples of high- and low-quality work. When I was given one or two examples, I used them as a template. If I'd had a whole stack, I could've internalized the underlying principles.
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Dear Mr. Schiess,
As a member of the new generation of lawyers that is constantly criticized for poor writing skills, I feel it necessary to point out that you cannot have a single sub-point in an outline. If you have a "1" you must also have a "2."
Additionally, if the educational standards for writing have declined, as opposed to simply the quality of writing, it is not just the students who are dumber, lazier, and sloppier than previous generations.
Sincerely,
Lucy C. Forsten
Wayne says:
You are criticizing one of your staunchest advocates. No one believes more strongly than I do that today's students are actually better writers than yesterday's. No one believes more strongly than I do that non-legal-writing law professors don't know what they're talking about.
Anyway, this is a blog, not a brief or a law-review article, so I don't adhere to the "if there's a 1 there must be a 2" rule here. Besides, if you read yesterday's post, you can see that there really are two. This post is a continuation of the previous one. Here is what the whole thing would look like (and please note the boldface items--my favorites):
"Law students' writing skills are poor."
When a non-legal-writing law professor says this, here are some possible explanations:
1. The statement is true because--
a. The first-year LRLW course is not adequately training students in the fundamentals of legal writing.
b. The first-year LRLW course could adequately train students in the fundamentals of legal writing, but the course logistics (large class, few credits) sap student motivation.
c. The first-year LRLW course is not adequately training students in the writing skills the students need for exams and seminar papers--the things they write for non-legal-writing classes. In other words, the first-year LRLW course can barely cover new vocabulary, new conventions, new types of documents (memos and briefs), new analytical skills, and legal research, so it can't ever get to the skills law professors are looking for on exams and in seminar papers.
d. The students enter law school with poor writing skills, and the first-year LRLW course can't overcome that.
e. Educational standards--particularly for writing--are declining, and every new generation of law students is is little dumber, lazier, and sloppier than the previous.
2. The statement is false because--
a. The professor is exaggerating the weaknesses of all students.
b. The professor is extrapolating the weaknesses of a few students to all students.
c. The professor has unrealistic expectations of law students' writing skills because the professor has forgotten professor's own level of writing skill when the professor was a student.
d. The professor has unrealistic expectations because the professor had atypically high-level writing skills as a student.
e. The professor isn't equipped to reliably assess what is or is not good writing.
f. The professor is assuming incorrectly that certain writing skills are being taught in another forum.
g. The professor is failing to communicate to students the professor's own expectations about writing.
h. The students are performing below their actual abilities because of time constraints, laziness, or lack of incentives.
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Wayne, many studies illustrate that people have been complaining about the writing skills of the younger generations for over 100 years (I can dig up these articles if you want). So the perception is nothing new, despite the idea that "when I was a kid, we knew our grammar, mechanics, etc."
That's not to say that writing skills have not declined. I have no idea. But the "older" generations who complain about the younger set had the same scorn heaped upon them by their elders, despite what they may think. So no one in this whole skills discussion is infallible.
And to the author of the first comment (Lucy): Relax. And you really are barking up the wrong tree; Wayne is absolutely in the tank for you.
Wayne says:
thx
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Professors' main exposure to students' writing is through timed exams. Revision is the key to good writing; which student revises exams? Professors don't get a fair sample of student writing, and they don't understand the importance of revision (look at law reviews). They don't care for the job of decoding hurried exam papers, but it's just part of what a law professor must do.
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