Legal Reasoning and Objective Writing

Book excerpt: Legal Reasoning and Objective Writing: A Comprehensive Approach is a textbook for the objective writing segment of a first-year legal writing class, written by two professors who have collaborated for many years, and who between them have over 50 years of experience teaching legal analysis and writing. The book, which is written in a conversational manner to engage students and put them at ease so that they grasp difficult concepts easily, uses a variety of short examples throughout the chapters as well as sample documents in the appendices with comprehensive annotations keyed to relevant portions of the book. Each chapter and accompanying optional closed-memo problem provide students with a sophisticated yet concrete step-by-step method to learn the analytical, organizational, and presentational skills necessary to convey legal analysis effectively. The accompanying optional introductory problem and related assignment materials use a flipped-class approach to guide students through the memo project independently, allowing teachers to adapt the problem to fit a variety of teaching sequences.