Law 17 - Legal Writing - slo

Upon successful completion of this course, a student will be able to:

1. Brief law cases in various legal subjects to improve students' understanding of the law and improve their legal analysis, argumentation, and legal writing required by a paralegal in a law firm. 

2. Critically analyze and argue issues of various legal subjects and topics as listed in #1 above.

3. Prepare legal documents, forms or papers including a legal demand letter, a legal memorandum, various types of motions, a mandatory settlement conference, trial brief, and other legal documents required by a paralegal in a law office. 

Also students will prepare a final legal research and writing paper. See format of the paper at http://profjordan.pbworks.com/format . The final legal writing and research paper will be in the form of a position or argumentative paper. It will train the student in legal analysis, finding of law cases, and improving legal argumentation.  The paper will be graded by using the following grading rubric - http://missionparalegal.pbworks.com/rubric-finalpaper

Students will various cases and write a case brief demonstrating their understanding and application of the essential facts and rules of law and legal principles of the case. see case brief rubric at http://missionparalegal.pbworks.com/briefing

Criteria: The “case brief” will achieve an “acceptable” or higher rating, and will be indicative of a paralegal who is competent to work in a law office, state agency or with the courts.

Students will read a court case and write a “case brief” using the FIRACT method of case briefing (“Facts, Issue, Rule, Application and Conclusion”).

The assessment will be evaluated using the following rating scale:

(4) – Superior - comprehensive, very accurate, analytical, sophisticated logic, incisive, persuasive discussion of the facts, issues, rules, rationale, holdings, applications, and conclusions (Facts, Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion, Take Home Mesage - "FIRACT" method)

(3) – Strong - generally convincing, sufficiently analytical and logical, covers well all of the parts of the FIRACT method for a case brief.

(2) – Acceptable – basic understanding, reasonable, unsophisticated but shows comprehension of the case and legal points, lacking mastery but still in control, limited scope, occasionally original, misses parts of the FIRACT method for a case brief.

(1) – Unacceptable - superficial, lacking understanding, non-academic, undigested, unfinished, missing the target, perfunctory, inappropriate to the assignment, poorly developed, does not follow FIRACT method for a case brief.

updated: 4/5/11