Legal writing became an important skill that I’ve learned to develop in the last couple of months. Wanting to become a lawyer and having no idea about the skills an aspiring lawyer must acquire was setting me up for failure. Luckily, through UWP I’ve acquire skills such as; reading court cases, drafting case briefs, and creating appellate briefs. However, 10 weeks is not enough time to gather all the writing skills needed for law school. As a result, I have identified my strengths, weaknesses, and ways to improve my legal writing skills. The standard approach of writing that’s employed by most fields of academia is composed by; an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion, all put together in an essay that must meet a minimum number of pages. In contrast, legal writing has three approaches towards writing and brevity is encouraged. Brevity is practiced in legal writing because adding unnecessary words can alter the analysis, meaning, and or outcome of the case. As a result, when doing legal writing, the author must signal the reader the different components of the case with …show more content…
The biggest weakness I found in both my office memorandum and appellate brief was the analysis the issue. When analyzing an issue, the author must be constantly referring to the rules being employed to stay on track of the case. If the author doesn’t refer to the rules of the case or uses a law dictionary, the author could potentially focus on the wrong aspect of the case, thus altering the outcome. The reason why I felt the analysis was my weakness was because I often felt like I could have added more thoughts to my argument. Again, because academia teaches students that writing more is better, I felt that I could have created a stronger analysis by analyzing beyond the rules that were provided and the irrelevant facts that were given in the
“Unteaching the Five Paragraph Essay” by Marie Foley demonstrates how a five paragraph essay formula disturbs the thought process of the students and limits what they can write. A five paragraph essay is an introduction with the main idea, with three supporting topics showing the relationship to the main idea, and a conclusion summarizing the entire essay. Foley argues that this formula forces students to fill in the blank and meet a certain a word limit. She noted that this formula was intended for teachers in the education system to teach an overcrowded class how to write. While it is beneficial for the first-time students learning how to write. In the long run, this standard destroys any free style writing, new connections between a topic,
The art of writing is a complex and difficult process. Proper writing requires careful planning, revision, and proofreading. Throughout the past semester, the quality of my writing has evolved significantly. At first, I struggled with the separation of different types of paragraphs, and I found writing them laborious. Constant practice, however, has eliminated many of my original difficulties, and helped to inspire confidence in my skills. As a collegiate writer, my strength lies in my clear understanding of the fundamentals of writing, while my primary weakness is proofreading my own work.
Frahm holds a similar point of view encouraging clear, straightforward writing not one with a “Confusing introduction. Lack of content. Bad transitions. (and) Excessive grammatical errors.” (Frahm 271).
The Elements of Style written by William Strunk and E.B. White, and Style: Toward Clarity and Grace written by Jospeh Williams both offer suggestions for establishing the comprehensive application of literary techniques and style. Each book, constructed differently, focuses on various areas of writing through comprehensive basic rules and guidelines. These books specifically identify the basic foundation for writing rules of usage, principle composition and offer suggestions for different types of style approach. The information provided also compels the average writer toward the necessary elements of the writing process through various methods of grammar, punctuation, and style implications. Though they are presented completely different, some of the basic style suggestions found in Strunk and White are somewhat similar to those in Williams. Both books propose that good writing style must consist of: clarity, precision, length, revision, cohesion, and reader sensitivity_all with the application of basic writing rules and guidelines. Although each book can be very helpful to the average writer, the intense amount of instruction may, at first, seem overwhelming.
It would be foolish to claim that I have never overanalysed and disregarded conveying ideas and theories properly, in the interest of impressing my reader. Nevertheless, this aspiration indicates there is more to academic writing than simply passing information.
Attending college at an old age, writing an effective paper is a formidable task I am trying to overcome. Although English was taught in my native country, there were no proper guidelines on writing a paper; hence most submitted essays were mostly results of brainstorming and “free writing”. Embracing such things as MLA, grammar, and structure, and exploring the limitless boundaries of critical thinking, I developed an idea of what is considered as “good writing”. Most of my papers were edited with the help of the Writing Center. I took all suggestions by my fellow peers and professors into developing my skills as a writer. From writing an essay without topic sentences or proper thesis, I developed the skills and learned the guidelines of becoming a proper writer at a college-undergraduate level.
In our modern society, we have forgotten the art of writing. When we write, we think to ourselves, the longer the sentence, the more intelligent I will sound. Many may say it is by writing long sentences. But is it all that true? In this piece of writing I would like to focus on an essay written by Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing. In this essay he explains how and why when we write, we should keep our sentences short. he also explains why students should be assigned essays that are not determinate on other sources as evidence. I will also be comparing this to a piece written by Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness. I will be comparing these two pieces on their writing style, and their essayistic ideas. My belief is that we need
3) To organize a legal argument by issue rather than by a chronological narrative of the facts.
In high school, writing essays was my weakest link. When I began my first semester of college, I still had that trouble in my first writing composition class. I improved significantly from gaining organization and length. When I started my second writing composition class, my grades for my paper sky rocketed! The essays I have written though out this semester have shown improvements in context and organizations, however, I still have some room for improvement on reasoning’s and thesis statement.
However, while writing the argumentative essay, it took much more than just asking myself a simple question. Since the topics of my body paragraphs were so diverse, I was forced to work harder at picturing the connections between all three of them. While I knew writing the process essay was difficult, when I began writing the argumentative essay, I knew it was going to be much more challenging. Nevertheless, after the paper was finally complete, my ability of writing transitional sentences was increasingly better due to the difficulty. Furthermore, I never would have examined so closely how to relate the ideas of college athletes’ monetary compensation to lawsuits being filed over disputes of unfairness (“Paying College Athletes” 3). Not only did the process essay help further my knowledge of transitional sentences, but the argumentative pushed it to the next
Over the past semester, I have found the most challenging part of this course to simply be the transition from high school composition classes to college. Because writing expectations are so different in college than in high school, even with AP and Dual Enrollment “college level” classes, I first found myself being overwhelmed with the pressure to write the perfect first draft. The pressure came from knowing how much a final draft of a paper contributed to my grade. This left me sitting in front of my computer for hours at a time with thoughts of what I wanted to say racing through my head, but unable to deliver these thoughts into organized, structured sentences. I learned, through writing my persuasive essay, that instead of trying to write the paper start to finish and already in its perfect form, it is easier for me to look at the paper through its different components and focus on them individually, then work to best organize my ideas fluently.
writing” by R. Ramsey, the ability to write competently is a requirement for success in any field.
Essay 5 Writing in the business field is not as easy it seems. There is steps I would take in order to get to where I need to be and it is to enroll in the Legal Environment of Business class. A year from now, I hope to take this class as well as other business classes to complete my degree at MCC. I plan on earning a four-year Bachelor’s Degree at a university and I hope that by the time I finish here, I had gained experience from my classes.
The required courses for the first year of law school include torts, contracts, criminal law, and writing classes (“What to Expect in Your First Year of Law School”). I immensely enjoy studying law and learning how it connects to different parts of our society and history, but I do not have enough confidence in my abilities to be a successful lawyer. Lawyers must be able to speak and write effectively, so writing classes are emphasized because analyzation and precise writing are critical skills. Students have to be comfortable speaking on their toes in front of others when participating in mock trials. During these trials, the professors oftentimes create confusing questions to test the students’ critical thinking skills or trip them up (“What to Expect in Your First Year of Law
Legal writing, regarded as one of the most vital tools within the legal field, is a skill that is important to both law students and legal professionals, as it is the basis in which one can successfully persuade and advocate their legal position. Students studying law as their undergraduate degree, often find legal writing a very difficult concept as they are required to abandon the writing techniques they once learnt within other disciplines . Though it is challenging, the emphasis of the importance of legal writing cannot be underestimated. Students are stressed on the importance of legal writing because the basis of the success of a lawyer is mostly determined on their ability to write well. A study conducted by the American Bar Association concluded that majority of employers expect recent law school graduates to possess an above average level of competency in relation to legal writing. Therefore, students are taught legal writing courses within their first year to aid in writing for other courses and to ensure they have more time to hone such a skill. Wojick even noted that by possessing outstanding writing skills, will more likely result in a form of future job security. Slocum (2011) noted that the skill of writing the analysis and solution of a client’s legal issue, is the basis of a lawyer’s practice. Kauffman (1978) further expounded on this