Miscellaneous

I had occasion today to peruse the web sites of two law schools, just to see what their legal-writing programs look like and who teaches them. At both, it appears that 100 percent of the teaching is done by fellows. A fellowship is a one-year contract typically extended to someone who is just embarking on an academic career, and whose main interest is in an area other than legal writing. It appears that teaching legal writing is part of their initiation into the academic world?something they have to go through before moving on to whatever field really interests them. If you ask any of them what they hope to be doing two years from now, the answer will not be ?teaching legal writing.?

The result of this system: no law student receives teaching in legal writing from anyone who has more than minimal teaching experience or who wants to make a career of teaching legal writing.



I know that the fellowship system is not universal; that some law schools actually hire legal-writing experts to teach legal writing. But to these two law schools and others who relegate teaching of legal writing to fellows instead of hiring real legal-writing faculty members, I ask: Why bother offering a course in legal writing at all? Do you think so little of legal writing that you think it can be taught by anyone with a J.D.?

Comments are open. Fire away.