Large- and Medium-Scale Organization

• Author: Edwin Scott Fruehwald
• Profession: Law Professor at the University of Alabama
• Pages: 153-179

Chapter Goals

1.

To help you understand the importance of large- and medium-scale

organization.

2. To help you prepare an outline.

3. To help you organize a legal argument or a discussion section.

4.

To help you understand how to articulate the structure of a document.

5. To help you organize other types of documents.

6.

To help you create continuity between sections, subsections, and

paragraphs.

Large- and medium-scale organization is as important as organization of the

sentence and paragraph. A paper that lacks a clear and coherent large- and

medium-scale structure is difcult to read and understand. A well-structured

paper guides the reader through the paper like an evenly owing river, tak-

ing the reader gently from subject to subject. The paper’s content should

generate the structure; the writer should not force a structure on a paper. A

coherent paper generally falls into clear sections and subsections.

After having done some research (and reection), but before beginning to

write, the author should draft an outline. He or she does not have to adhere

faithfully to the outline in the nal version, but developing an outline before

writing helps create a well-structured paper. The rst step in preparing an

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Large- and Medium-

Scale Organization

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outline is to carefully review the paper’s purpose. What problems are you

writing about? Who is the intended audience? Are you writing an argumen-

tative paper or an explanatory one? What are the subtopics? How do they

t together? What are your conclusions?

Organization of a Discussion or Argument Section

A lawyer will generally use the law to organize the discussion section of

an objective memorandum or the argument section of a brief. When there

are two or more issues, you should organize using the issues. You should

put the issues in a logical order. Possibilities for organizing issues include

(1) put threshold issues rst, (2) put the issues in order of cause of action,

or (3) put most important issues rst. Consider the following examples.

1.

This court should grant the defendant’s motion to dismiss based on

lack of personal jurisdiction.

2. A plaintiff cannot recover for negligent iniction of emotional harm.

1. The defendant owed a duty to the plaintiff.

2. The defendant breached the duty owed to the plaintiff.

3. The defendant’s conduct caused the plaintiff’s damages.

4. The plaintiff incurred damages.

When there is only one issue or within an issue, organize by the law. In other

words, take the relevant rule, break it into parts, subparts, and so on. You

should not force subdivisions. When you can’t subdivide anymore, use the

small-scale paradigm from the previous chapter.

First, you need to nd the relevant rule for the section. You can do this

by (1) using a rule already synthesized by a case, (2) synthesizing a rule

from several cases, (3) basing a rule on a statute or administrative rule,

or (4) synthesizing a rule from a statute and cases. If you use an already

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