Adv.LegWriting:Legal Drafting

Catalog description

Enrollment Limit: 12 Prerequisite: Legal Research & Writing I & II Course Requirement: paper May satisfy the Upper Level Writing requirement This seminar is intended to build on the foundation resulting from the two required first-year Legal Research & Writing courses and introduces new drafting skills and new research techniques. The course theme is how lawyers work with legislation and regulations. For approximately half of the course, students will prepare various types of correspondence, including a job letter, client letter, and a demand letter; and will do short exercises that will require the rewriting and editing of portions of statutes. The final paper assignment (worth 50% of the course grade) will require the drafting of a state or federal statute, local ordinance, university or law school policy statement, set of state or federal regulations, or similar rule-based document (such as sports rules) on a topic of the student?s choice; students will do two presentations based on their work in progress on the final project. Several papers for this course have resulted in actual legislation or have been published. This course also prepares students well for the Pennsylvania and Multi-State Performance Test, by covering some of the types of documents likely to be assigned on the test. Requires approval of professors to be taken with PA Legislative Process Simulation.