Mercer's Approach to Teaching Legal Writing and Research

Mercer's Legal Writing Program implements the best and most effective ways to teach legal writing and research. Here are some of the key characteristics of Mercer's approach:

1. We've identified the most important analytical skills lawyers need so we can be sure the curriculum covers them thoroughly and effectively.

• researching a legal issue
  
• formulating a rule from a single case
  
• synthesizing a rule from multiple authorities
  
• articulating the rule using a particular rule-structure
  
• selecting an organizational plan from among a set of organizational
• paradigms
  
• using particular kinds of legal reasoning
  
• making and using factual inferences

2. Because it's impossible to write well without thinking well, we emphasize substance, forms of reasoning, and structural decisions writers must make. We believe that the early stages of the writing process actually help create the analysis, not just communicate it.

3. We place the two core required writing courses in the second and third semester. That way, students have a chance to adjust to law study before they tackle the important substantive material of the core writing courses.

4. In the first semester, we provide introductory work on forms of legal reasoning, research sources, and structural paradigms. Students prepare for the core writing courses by taking Legal Analysis, Introduction to Legal Research, and a small-section doctrinal course with a significant writing component. This first semester content provides contextual learners with an overview of the key material. It also prepares students to enter the core legal writing courses at a deeper level.

5. We intentionally use multiple teaching and staffing formats at appropriate stages in the curriculum.

• tenured and tenure-track professors for the core courses
  
• student mentors in the introductory first semester
  
• small writing groups using peer feedback and reader-response techniques
  
• practitioners for upper-level drafting courses

6. We teach writing as a constructive process with different goals at different stages. We comment and hold conferences on early drafts so we can help students craft a strong analysis. Then in later writing stages, we focus on the conventions of particular kinds of documents and the technicalities expected of good writing.

7. Research teaching is process-centered too. We focus on teaching students how to devise a research plan and how to adjust that plan according to results at each stage of the process. Since lawyers must be life-long learners, our goal is to help students develop both confidence and the ability to find the law on any subject.

8. Drawing on principles of learning theory, we postpone focus on grammar and punctuation until students have become familiar with their new discourse community. People just entering a new discipline must adjust to new thought processes and authoritative sources. Once they become more comfortable with their new discipline, they are better able to focus on technical requirements and the improvement of preexisting skills.

9. Because legal writing and research require knowledge of important substantive material, we give final examinations after the first research course and after the first core writing course.

10. We fully integrate electronic and print research instruction to better teach the relationship of these two key research methods. Through experiential learning techniques, students learn to use a wide range of legal and law-related resources.

11. Mercer students take more credits and semesters of writing and research than do other law students. Mercer requires the equivalent of nine credit hours or legal research and writing plus a two-credit seminar. In addition, most students choose to take one or more of our popular upper-division electives.

12. The Certificate in Advanced Legal Writing, Research, and Drafting provides the most thorough legal writing and research instruction anywhere. In addition to the three semesters of required writing courses, participating students:

• complete two semesters of Advanced Writing Group
  
• take an advanced research course
  
• take an advanced drafting or writing course
  
• do three independent drafting projects
  
• prepare a writing portfolio
  
• pass a grammar and style competency examination.