Lawyering Process Program

Our three-semester program requires students to complete nine graded credits of legal analysis, research, writing, and skills training. This expansive program allows students to leave school already proficient in the key language skills of legal practice.

A Grounding in the Basics
The first-year courses focus on predictive and persuasive writing, computer and manual research, and professionalism; the course also includes brief introductions to the lawyering skills of interviewing, counseling and negotiation.

A Chance to Specialize
Students select from a menu of courses for their third required course in lawyering process. This practice allows students to shape their own legal writing experiences and offers faculty an opportunity to develop courses close to their own interests. Advanced courses currently include drafting (both general courses and area-specific courses like drafting in the intellectual property context); advanced advocacy (both trial and appellate); judicial writing; and a general advanced legal writing course. Often students choose to take more than one of these classes, even though only one is required.

A Law School Community that Values Writing
Other opportunities for students to write abound at the law school. Students write a scholarly paper during their upper division years, and attend required workshops on scholarly writing. An "Advanced Writers' Group" offers students the chance to develop editing skills. Additionally, the law school offers students the chance to participate in several service learning projects that involve writing.

Boyd students have also enjoyed the opportunity to learn from nationally respected legal writing teachers from outside our program. For example, Professor Terri LeClercq taught "Law and Social Justice" as an interim class in 2006, and Professor Linda Edwards taught "Briefs That Changed the World" in 2007. We look forward to continuing this tradition of bringing in notable scholars to teach in our program.

The Lawyering Process Faculty
The Lawyering Process faculty have been an important and respected part of the law school faculty since the founding of the law school in 1998. From the beginning, Lawyering Process faculty have voted in faculty meetings and served on committees. The law school has recognized the contribution of the Lawyering Process Program by awarding the Director and Associate Director named professorships honoring Ralph Denton. Lawyering Process faculty are eligible for long term contracts, research grants, and professional development leaves. Click here for more about the faculty.

A small group of gifted professionals occasionally teach as adjuncts in the third semester classes of the Lawyering Process Program. These dedicated lawyers bring practical expertise to the program as well as knowledge of the current demands of practicing law. In our adjunct training program, new adjuncts co-teach with full-time faculty before moving on to teach on their own—our way of allowing them to develop teaching experience to match their professional knowledge.

Our first year classes typically have 14-22 students per class, and the upper-level Lawyering Process courses cap enrollment at 15. Small classes allow us to employ a full range of pedagogies. Faculty members can merge the various approaches to create their own styles, effectively matched to their strengths.