Legal Writing

The saying is that in law school, you learn to think like a lawyer. From the first day of law
school, Legal Writing will teach you not only how to think like a lawyer but also how to
communicate, research, and argue like one.
You will learn those lawyering skills by playing the role of a lawyer solving legal problems for
clientsfinding the law needed to solve the problem, making strategic choices about the best
course of action to take, and persuasively communicating your analysis and arguments to a
variety of audiences in written documents and oral presentations.
Beyond the mandatory first-year course, Penn Law offers a wealth of writing, drafting, and
advocacy courses and extra-curricular activities that allow students to develop their lawyering
skills.

Courses

We offer a wide array of courses that will help you develop and hone your legal writing skills
throughout law school.
The First-Year Course

Legal Writing marks the beginning of a law students professional apprenticeship. In this yearlong, required course, first-year students learn the skills that lawyers need to practice lawthe
research skills to find the law applicable to a problem, the analysis skills to solve the problem,
and the writing and oral advocacy skills to present those solutions to a client, another attorney, or
a judge.
Legal Writing Instruction
Legal Writing is taught by full-time faculty with knowledge of both legal practice and best
teaching practices. Students also work in small groups led by Legal Writing Instructors, talented
third-year students who are selected through a competitive process. The small group work
maximizes the individual attention and feedback students receive in the course.
Legal research is taught by Penns law librarians, who hold degrees in both law and library
science. During interactive research workshops, students follow the librarians through examples
of computerized research problems on their own laptops. Research and writing are integrated in
the course so that students practice making judgments about using the authority they find to
solve problems.

The Learning Process

After acquiring skills through a series of research exercises and increasingly complex writing
assignments, students use those skills to solve problems for simulated clients. They learn to
create some of the most important documents that attorneys use to communicate: letters to
clients, memoranda to other lawyers, and briefs to judges. Much of the learning in the course
happens outside the classroom as students work in the role of attorneys, writing and rewriting
these documents. They also work collaboratively with their peers in class to formulate and
articulate arguments and meet individually with their Legal Writing Instructors to discuss the
critique of their assignments.
The culmination of the first term is a large research problem. Students must bring to bear all the
research skills they have learned during the semester and write a memorandum to a senior
attorney, laying out the applicable law and using that law to support their conclusions about the
problems likely outcome.
In the spring term, students learn persuasive writing techniques, write a motion brief addressed to
a trial judge, and argue the motion. The final assignment of the year is a brief to a mock court of
appeals and an oral argument at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia before a panel of
practicing lawyers and judges. By the end of the year, students will have reached a level of
mastery of basic lawyering skills that will allow them to tackle whatever problems they
encounter in their first legal jobs.
Upper-level Courses

All law school courses develop lawyering skills, but some focus more closely on the
communication, advocacy, and research skills introduced in Legal Writing.
All law students are required to complete an upper-level writing project. This paper must be
supervised by a faculty member and must go through at least one set of comments and revisions.
Advanced Legal Research is a small class taught by Penns JD-degreed librarians. It
emphasizes hands-on work on sophisticated research problems that lawyers encounter in
practice.
Appellate Advocacy is taught in small sections by practicing appellate advocates during the fall
of the second year. Students receive advanced writing and oral advocacy training and the benefit
of critique from experienced appellate lawyers.
Civil Pretrial Litigation is a simulation course in which students take a mock case from initial
client contact though settlement. This class is writing-intensive and expands on the litigation
skills taught in the first-year course.

Contract Drafting teaches students to negotiate, draft, and revise contracts. The class addresses
both the substance and style of standard contract provisions.
Trial Advocacy is taught by expert trial attorneys and judges.
Writing for Practice covers writing in a transactional setting in which lawyers are advisers and
problem-solvers for their clients. Students draft opinion letters and due diligence documents,
focusing on making complex ideas understandable to clients
Advocacy Competitions - There are many co-curricular and extracurricular moot court and
mock trial competitions students can participate in to hone their skills.
Legal Writing for LLMs

U.S. Legal Research and Writing is a required course for all LLM students. The course starts in
the summer and continues into the first third of the fall semester. U.S. Legal Research and
Writing focuses on basic legal research, legal analysis, particularly the use of precedent in a
common law system, and cogent written and oral communication skills.