Legal Writing III: Discovery Drafting

Catalog description

7355. 3 hours. Legal Writing III is a required course that satisfies the Upper-Level Major Writing Requirement. UNT Dallas College of Law offers a variety of Legal Writing III courses that students can select based on their interest. All Legal Writing III courses are designed to give students experience drafting multiple writing assignments and engaging in the process of rewriting each of the major assignments in the course. Although the type of writings being drafted vary based on the topic of the Legal Writing III course, all Legal Writing III courses include at least (and often more than) a total of 25-pages of writing with the opportunity to rewrite the major assignment(s) after significant written and oral feedback from the course professor. Major writing assignments will comprise at least 60 percent of the course grade. Additionally, all Legal Writing III courses require students to complete at least two Multi-State Performance Tests ("MPT") selected by the Director of Legal Writing. A practice MPT will be given at the midterm exam and a graded MPT (worth 10 percent of the course grade) will be given at the final exam. Students will study the rules governing civil discovery and draft discovery requests using the various written discovery mechanisms, such as requests for disclosure, requests for production, requests for admission, interrogatories, and subpoenas. Students will also research and draft a longer written assignment related to a discovery dispute. In addition to the core curriculum, students will study certain discrete discovery topics, such as discovery in criminal cases, discovery in arbitrations, e-discovery, and cross-border discovery issues. This course serves as a major writing requirement.