Trusts and Estates Drafting: Avoiding Rigor Mortis in the Law School Curriculum - Karen J. Sneddon

• Citation: Vol. 63 No. 3
• Publication year: 2012

Trusts and Estates Drafting: Avoiding Rigor Mortis in the Law School Curriculum

by Karen J. Sneddon*

Every day lawyers sit with fingers curled above keyboards and pens poised above notepads. Lawyers are writers. There may have been a time when the practice of law primarily involved oral communication. However, the practice of law has long since become one of written communication.¹ Although most law schools pride themselves on producing client-ready graduates, few schools actually deliver on this promise, especially as it relates to transactional practice.²

The American Bar Association Standards and Procedures³ requires that each law student receive substantial instruction in, among other categories, "writing in a legal context, including at least one rigorous writing experience in the first year and at least one additional rigorous writing experience after the first year."⁴ The rigorous writing experience must be evaluated in light of

* Associate Professor of Law, Mercer University, Walter F. George School of Law. Louisiana State University (B.A., summa cum laude, 1999); Tulane Law School (J.D., summa cum laude, 2002). Member, Tulane Law Review (2000-2002); Managing Editor (2001-2002). Thanks to Dean Gary J. Simson for his suggestions on this Essay.

1. See, e.g., Edward D. Re, Increased Importance of Legal Writing in the Era of "the Vanishing Trial," 21 Touro L. Rev. 665 (2005).

2. See, e.g., John Burwell Garvey & Anne F. Zinkin, Making Law Students Client-Ready: A New Model in Legal Education, 1 Duke Forum for L. & Soc. Change 101, 102 (2009), available at http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dflsc/dfltoc1n1/ (stating that "the Langdellian method, as the primary form of instruction, fails to make law students client-ready").

3. 2011-2012 Standards and Rules for Approval of Law Schools (2011), available at http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_educationresources/standards.html.

4. Id. § 302(a)(3).

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the number and nature of writing projects assigned to students; the opportunities a student has to meet with a writing instructor for purposes of individualized assessment of the student's written products; the number of drafts that a student must produce of any writing project; and the form of assessment used by the writing instructor.⁵

The additional rigorous writing experience after the first year, commonly referred to as the upper-level writing requirement, recognizes the importance of writing to the practice of law and serves to encourage continued instruction in legal writing beyond legal writing coursework required in the first year.⁶

One of the curriculum reforms that the Mercer Law faculty adopted in the spring of 2011 was allowing students to satisfy the upper-level writing required by any one of a variety of options. Previously, students could only satisfy the requirement by taking a seminar. Students may still satisfy the requirement by taking a seminar.⁷ Alternatively, however, students may satisfy the requirement by taking a specifically designated course.⁸ Law schools have traditionally favored a litigation-based approach to courses,⁹ and these designated courses do include...