Welcome Teachers of (Legal) Writers!

This website is 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. Major assignments are offered throughout the course to help students analyze and apply legal writing skills and scholarship to make an argument for an articulable social change in the world.

Teachers should take what they want, leave what they do not, and feel free to contact me with questions.

As a writing teacher and a lawyer it is my hope this course, and this 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. Writing is a unique and ever-challenging discipline. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” The life of the law is one made of the written word. I am thankful for the opportunity to give back in a small way to such an important community – those who help make the writing happen.

Best,

Jesse D. McLain, J.D.