Exciting Times for Lewis & Clark’s Legal Analysis and Writing Program

Lewis and Clark has developed a nationally recognized Legal Analysis and Writing program thanks to its innovative teaching, extensive curricular offerings, and involvement in the national Legal Writing community.

The strength of Lewis and Clark’s program is its faculty and its curriculum. Under the leadership of Professor Steve Johansen, the school has one of the most experienced Legal Analysis and Writing faculties in the country. Believing that they are teachers first, the faculty takes advantage of small class sizes in all writing courses to develop innovative teaching strategies that enable students to develop their critical thinking and writing skills.

Recently, the school expanded its Legal Analysis and Writing offerings for both first year and upper division students. The first year program now requires five credit hours of intensive instruction in the fundamentals of legal research, reasoning, and writing. Upper division students continue to develop their mastery of communication skills through two advanced writing experiences. The first, the Writing Intensive Experience, allows student to develop their writing skills in a variety of contexts including contract drafting, statutory interpretation, and the art of legal persuasion. Students complete their Legal Analysis and Writing training in a Capstone Experience where they apply their previous skills training to produce a scholarly paper on particular legal issue of interest to them. Through the integrated curriculum, students are able to develop their reasoning and writing skills throughout their law school experience.

Distinguished Visitor in Legal Analysis and Writing Project

In the spring of 2009, the school created its Distinguished Visitor in Legal Analysis and Writing Project. This project allows us to attract nationally known teachers and scholars to enrich our Legal Analysis and Writing program. In addition to teaching, the Distinguished Visitor is actively engaged in scholarship and contributes actively to the life of the school.

Our first Distinguished Visitor is Ken Chestek of Indiana University at Indianapolis. Ken is the President-elect of the Legal Writing Institute, an organization of more than 2100 legal writing professionals in the United States and around the world. He served as a member of the Board of Directors and Treasurer of LWI. From 2005-2008 he co-chaired the ALWD/LWI Annual Survey Committee, and from 2004-2008 he served as a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, a peer-reviewed academic journal. He currently serves as list manager for the LWI discussion listserv (hosted at IU-Indy law school). He has published and given lectures on a wide variety of subjects, including persuasion, teaching methods, tax exemption policy, hospitals and the uses of computers in law offices.

Future Distinguished Visitors

Next fall, our second Distinguished Visitor will be Dan Barnett of Boston College. Dan is one of the most recognizable names in Legal Writing. He has been active in the Association of American Law Schools, serving as the Chair of the Section on Legal Writing, Analysis and Research and as the Chair of the Military Recruiting Task Force of the Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues. In addition, he was a member of the Board of Directors for the Legal Writing Institute from 2004 to 2008 and is the Chair of the Planning Committee for the 2010 LWI Conference, a position he also held for the Institute’s 2002 Biennial Conference. Dan designed and led workshops on critiquing student work at the 2000 national conference of the Legal Writing Institute and the 2003 New Teachers Workshop, sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools. Those workshops have become an essential part of the Institute’s program and have repeated at every conference since 2000. Dan’s most recent publications include:

• 'Form Ever Follows Function': Using Technology to Improve Feedback in Law Student Writing 42 Valparaiso University Law Review 755 (2008) and
• A Methodology for Mentoring Writing in Law Practice: Using Textual Clues to Provide Effective and Efficient Feedback. 27 Quinnipiac Law Review 171 (2009).

Dan spent a semester in France in 2002 as the Visiting Professor of American Law at the University of Avignon where he taught, in French, Le Droit du Contrat aux Etats-Unis. Dan is also a superb teacher. He received the 2004 Boston College Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004 and again in 2007.

Returning to the community

In addition to our Distinguished Visitors, next year we will welcome back Judith Miller to the Lewis and Clark community. Judith directed our Legal Writing program in the 1980s. Since that time, she has been at Yale Law School where she most recently served as the Dean’s Chief of Staff and Director for Academic Research Programs.

Conference on Applied Legal Storytelling

In addition to our Distinguished Visitor Program, Lewis and Clark is also drawing national attention as the host of Once Upon A Legal Time: Chapter Two, the second international conference on Applied Legal Storytelling. Building on the success of the first conference, held in London in 2007, this conference seeks to foster collaboration and dialogue about the skill of storytelling in law and about teaching storytelling and other skills to law students and practitioners.

This conference will bring together academics, judges, and practitioners to explore the role of narrative in legal practice and curricular strategies that will prepare students to use story and narrative as they enter the practice of law. The conference schedule and registration information can be found here.