Write on
| Publication year | 2019 |
| Pages | 20 |
Judge for a Day
by Catherine Fregosi, Esq.
Legal writing faculty at Vermont Law School contribute to the Write On department for every issue of this Journal. We generally write about some aspect of legal writing that is meant to help you in your practice, such as citation,[1] the use of rhetoric,[2] or drafting policy analysis.[3] This time around, I am writing to ask for your help and to share an opportunity to meaningfully contribute to legal education and earn a couple of CLE credits along the way.
First, some background on the legal writing program at Vermont Law School. Most law schools require students to take two semesters of legal writing courses. We require three semesters of legal writing. Each semester focuses on a different kind of legal writing. In the first semester of law school, students learn IRAC, how to cite cases and statutes, and work on drafting objective memoranda. Assignments in the first semester are closed universe, allowing students to focus on mastering the basics of writing. The second semester of legal writing introduces persuasive writing, different organizational structures, and different Blue-book rules. Second semester assignments are open universe. Students start developing their legal analysis skills by working through more complex fact patterns and legal arguments. They learn how to synthesize rules and work on sorting out relevant from tangential authority. Students do this through drafting trial court flings and short academic works. At the end of the semester, students present a ten-minute argument as an introduction to oral advocacy.
In the third semester at Vermont Law School, students are required to take Appellate Advocacy. The premise of this class is simple: Students write a full-length brief in a case pending before the United States Supreme Court and then present a twenty-minute oral argument before a panel of judges. The skills required in this class are a leap beyond those required in the first two semesters of legal writing. First, while professors give students a small handful of cases as research prompts, students must conduct a great deal of independent research to support their legal arguments. For many students, this is their first exposure to working with not just cases and statutes, but also secondary sources like treatises and law review articles. And since the cases are pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, they often implicate federal constitutional issues. Thus, students may need to work with at least several decades of jurisprudence on particular constitutional provisions.
Second, students have to put all of that research together to form a coherent and logical legal argument. This is the hard part. Just as legal writing professors give students a few cases as research prompts, we also give students a strong nudge in the direction of the best arguments for both petitioner and respondent. But students need to work out the intricacies of those arguments on their own. For almost all students, this is the first time they have had to independently determine the correct analytic path to the result that they are seeking from the Court. And then they still need to draft that argument in a persuasive, but not over the top, voice with perfect citations. Finally, students need to present a twenty-minute oral argument on their brief.
Appellate Advocacy has become something of a rite of passage for Vermont Law School students. A student recently told me that in this class he started to think that he might, actually, one day become an attorney. Students, of course, learn a great deal of substantive law in their other classes. But Appellate Advocacy challenges them to be self-directed and thoughtful in a way that doctrinal classes do not always require. It is that aspect of this course that my student was commenting on—after writing a brief and presenting an oral argument, he started to believe that he might have the skills and aptitude to become an attorney.
I suggest that, even more than writing a brief, it is the oral argument component of this class that pushes students into believing they can succeed. And this is why I am asking for your help on behalf of Vermont Law School’s legal writing department and students.
As mentioned above, students present oral argument before a panel of judges. That panel is comprised of practicing attorneys and judges who generously volunteer their time to help Appellate Advocacy students. Many attorneys and judges have made the trek to South Royalton every year for years and even decades to ask students questions and give students feedback. We are grateful for each of these volunteers. But for those of you who have not heard of this opportunity, please consider...
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