Legal Research and Writing Syllabus for Fall of 2008

SYLLABUS

Fall 2008 LEGAL RESEARCH AND WRITING Prof. D. A. Hughes

"Vita regulae applicatio."

A. Required Texts

B. Garner, The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (2d ed. 2006)

R. Neumann, Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing (5th ed. 2005)
R. Berring & E. Edinger, Finding the Law (12th ed. 2005)

The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (18th ed. 2005) = [BB]

West's Black's Law Dictionary (3d pocket ed. 2006) = [BLD]

B. Course Description

The legal research and writing class will span two semesters but have only one final grade. The two primary goals of the course are to teach you how to do legal research and how to write certain legal documents. Of course, developing these two skills requires that you become proficient at legal analysis and that your work be as free as possible from solecisms of usage, syntax, and grammar.

C. Course Requirements

1. Attendance & Attention

Regular class attendance is required, and more than three unexcused absences per semester may, at the instructor's discretion, be sufficient reason to lower a student's grade. I expect that you will pay close attention in class and be quiet. It is not permissible for students to answer cell-phones or pagers during class, absent a medical emergency. Nor is it permissible for students to carry on side conversations in class. Please understand that I often require that students turn off their lap-tops to participate actively in class. Please also note that I expressly reserve the right to eject students from my classroom for improper conduct. Students who are asked to leave will be considered absent without an excuse for the purposes of the attendance policy.

2. Preparation

First, I expect each student to purchase his or her own copy of the current edition of each required text listed above. Second, I expect that you will complete all assigned readings prior to class. The assigned readings are the starting points for our class discussions, and it will not be possible for you to understand what is going on in class if you have not read the material closely and done your absolute best to understand if fully beforehand. As a general rule of thumb you should expect to spend 3 hours of preparation for each hour that we will spend together in class. Students should always be prepared to discuss the first of each set of problems from the Neumann book in class as we pass through them. From time to time I require some of the problems in the Neumann book to be written out and handed in.

3. Assignments

You will be expected to complete satisfactorily periodic graded and ungraded assignments to receive credit for this course. Students who fail assignments may be required to do them over again at my discretion. A one-hour examination on legal research will be administered during class on November 12th. All graded assignments are due in class on the date specified, unless otherwise indicated. Graded assignments that are turned in after the deadline will be docked 5 points for every hour they are late to a maximum of 50 points per day. A paper that is 5 minutes late incurs the first hour's penalty, and so forth. Extensions for medical and other emergencies will be granted only if timely made for compelling reasons. Vocabulary assignments and library exercises, however, are not graded but are normally due in class.

4. Grade Determination

Grades will be calculated according to the following formula, except when any of the previously stated reasons for changing or withholding a student's grade is present:

Fall semester Assignment:	Point Value:
1. Closed Memo #1	5% (of final grade)
2. Memo # 1 Rewrite	10%
3. Research Exam	15%
4. Open Memo #1	20%
Spring semester:
Various assignments	the other 50%

5. Accommodations for Disabilities

Any student who requires accommodation for a disability should advise me privately upon receipt of this syllabus. (Please note, however, that it is your responsibility to speak with the Associate Dean to request formally any accommodation for or exception to any academic procedure based on physical or mental handicap.)

6. Appointments

My office is room 456 in the library along the north wall; my office telephone number is
614-236-6476; my email address is dhughes@law.capital.edu; and my web page may be found at http://users.law.capital.edu/dhughes. I expect that each student will make an appointment to speak with me after each graded assignment is first returned to discuss that assignment. (I normally do not conference with students about "rewrites," since we have already discussed the paper once before.) Sign-up sheets for appointments are posted outside my office. Because of the anonymous grading system, students must cover their identification numbers when they come for a conference.

7. Supplemental Writing Program

In the spring of 2004, the law school’s full faculty voted to modify the first-year curriculum by requiring participation in the “Supplemental Writing Program” for all entering first-year students who are identified as having writing problems. The faculty put in place a two-part system to provide help to first-year students with writing problems.

First, all entering students will be given three separate writing diagnostics: a client letter assignment, a “free-write” exercise, and a grammar test. The client letter assignment will be evaluated by the legal writing faculty; the “free-write” exercise and grammar test will be evaluated by Dr. Kevin R. Griffith of the English Department of Capital University. Any student who performs unsatisfactorily on two of the three diagnostic exercises will be required to take the Supplemental Writing Program in either the Fall or the Spring, depending on the ability of the school to schedule everyone.

Second, after evaluating the various assignments in the Legal Research and Writing I class, the legal writing faculty will identify students who were not caught by the initial diagnostics but whose work evidences difficulties in writing. Students so identified by their legal writing teachers, and, indeed, students so identified by teachers of the other first-year courses, will also be required to attend the Supplemental Writing program in the spring semester. Further, those students who do not make sufficient progress in the fall Supplemental Writing Program will be required to attend the spring Supplemental Writing Program too.

The law school faculty as a whole decided that the failure to complete satisfactorily the Supplemental Writing Program if one has been required to take it will cause a student's combined grade in LRW I & LRW II to be lowered by one full letter grade! The Supplemental Writing Program was not designed by the legal writing faculty but rather by the law faculty as a whole, and thus it is not within the control of the legal writing faculty but rather the law school administration. If you are required to attend the Supplemental Writing Program, it will be your individual responsibility to make sure that you comply with all of its requirements. No one on the legal writing faculty will insure your compliance, so don't be caught unaware!

8. Reading Schedule

Date	Subject	Read (in all of the sources below)
		Neumann	Berring	Garner	BB	BLD

W 8-27	Introduction	Ch.1-2	Ch. 1	143-147		List 1

F 8-29	Opinions & Statutes	Ch. 5-6		147-158

W 9-03	Intro. to Memo	Ch. 7-9		339-352		List 2

F 9-05	Paradigm of Proof	Ch.10-13		158-173

W 9-10	Paradigm & Cases	Ch.14-15		173-176		List 3

F 9-12	Paradigm & Statutes	Ch.16		176-178

W 9-17	Facts & Paragraphs	Ch.17-19		178-181		List 4

F 9-19	Intro. to Citation	Ch. 20		123-134	pp. 1-24

W 9-24	Cases		Ch. 2	3-11		List 5

F 9-26	Cases, Cont'd			12-15

W 10-01	Shepard's & Keycite		Ch. 3	15-19		List 6

F 10-03	CALR & Digests		Ch. 4	19-23

W 10-08	More On Citation			24-28	pp. 45-99	List 7

F 10-10	Statutes		Ch. 5	29-31

W 10-15	Statutes, Cont'd

F 10-17	Legislative History		Ch. 6	31-34

W 10-22	Constitutions		Ch. 7	34-37

F 10-24	Administrative Law		Ch. 8	38-42

W 10-29	Court Rules		Ch. 9	43-45

F 10-31	Secondary Sources		Ch. 10	48-52

W 11-05