Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2003

Publication Source

Temple Law Review

Abstract

This article adds to the growing body of scholarship on legal writing and its role in the legal academy. It addresses an area of legal discourse that is of importance to law students, the legal academy and the bar admissions process, yet has been neglected in legal scholarship. The article is a call for legal writing faculty members and other legal writing specialists to become more involved in the process of teaching about and critiquing the discourse involved in traditional end-of-semester doctrinal law school exams. This article suggests how law school legal writing programs, by deliberately teaching about exam writing, can be more responsive to the needs of law students, improve the law school curriculum, and be more involved in the bar examination process.

The article places the teaching of the discourse involved in exam answer writing in the theoretical context of recent scholarship on legal writing. In addition to a theoretical discussion of legal writing, the article provides concrete suggestions for improving legal writing instruction in the legal academy and involving legal writing experts in analyzing the examination regime used in law schools and state bar exams. The article draws on Todd's nine years of teaching legal writing at the University of Minnesota Law School, Hamline University School of Law, and Northern Kentucky University's Salmon P. Chase College of Law.

Inclusive pages

69-89

ISBN/ISSN

0899-8086

Document Version

Published Version

Comments

This document has been made available for download by permission of the publisher. Subscription information.

Permission documentation is on file.

Publisher

Beasley School of Law, Temple University

Volume

76

Place of Publication

Philadelphia, PA

Download

Share

COinS