Welcome Teachers of (Legal) Writers!

This website is a designed to provide an accessible and interactive way to tackle a course entitled Writing in the Discipline of Law. This class is for an upper-level undergraduate interested in the future practice of law, public policy, political science, public administration and more. It is set up to cover upper-level writing theory foundations and then adapt those foundations specifically for legal writing and analysis.

This course covers: introduction-level material (importance of clear and concise language, etc.); foundations of writing theory and its application to legal situations; and offers units focused on legal writing for a lay, academic and professional/practitioner-based audiences. Ultimately, several final projects/assignments are offered as options to apply legal writing and analysis to make an argument for an articulable social change in the world.

Teachers should take what they want and leave what they do not. There is a guide and a rationale for the class, along with a description of my connection to course, at the end of the site following Additional Materials.

As a writing teacher and a lawyer it is my hope this course, and its accompanying site, is helpful, in at least some way, for all would-be legal writing scholars, teachers and students. It is hard to imagine an area of writing more crucial to every day life and the power to operate knowingly and freely within it.

Writing teachers work as hard, if not harder, than any others. I am thankful for the opportunity to give back in the small way to such an important community.

Best,

Jesse D. McLain, J.D.