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Legal Reasoning and Objective Writing: A Comprehensive Approach

Daniel L. Barnett, Jane Kent Gionfriddo

$135.00

  • ISBN: 9781454858973

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  • Description

    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.

  • Details
    Page Count 352
    Published 02/29/2016
  • Additional Product Details

    Detailed Table of Contents (PDF Download)

    Contents
    Acknowledgements 
    Preface

    PART 1    : INTRODUCTION TO LAW PRACTICE WRITING
     
    CHAPTER 1: THE BASICS OF OBJECTIVE WRITING

    CHAPTER 2: THE STAGES OF OBJECTIVE WRITING 

    PART 2: OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS OF LEGAL PROBLEMS

    CHAPTER 3: SOURCES OF LAW AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP

    CHAPTER 4: STATUTORY ANALYSIS—A BASIC PROCESS

    CHAPTER 5: STATUTORY ANALYSIS—ADDITIONAL STEPS

    CHAPTER 6: ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUAL JUDICIAL OPINIONS

    CHAPTER 7: SYNTHESIS OF JUDICIAL OPINIONS

    CHAPTER 8: SYNTHESIS OF JUDICIAL OPINIONS IN COMPLEX ANALYSES

    CHAPTER 9: QUESTIONS OF FIRST IMPRESSION

    CHAPTER 10: ANALYTICAL FOUNDATION OF PREDICTIONS

    PART 3: THE DISCUSSION SECTION OF AN OBJECTIVE MEMO 

    CHAPTER 11: EFFECTIVE OVERALL ORGANIZATION

    CHAPTER 12: ANALYSES OF THE LAW:  EFFECTIVE STRUCTURE 

    CHAPTER 13: APPLICATION-PREDICTIONS:  EFFECTIVE STRUCTURE

    CHAPTER 14: CITATION TO LEGAL AUTHORITY 

    PART 4: THE FINAL STEPS TO COMPLETE AN OBJECTIVE MEMO 

    CHAPTER 15: BEYOND THE DISCUSSION SECTION: ADDING THE FACTS, CONCLUSION,
    QUESTION PRESENTED, AND BRIEF ANSWER SECTIONS 

    CHAPTER 16: PRESENTATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS 

    PART 5: OTHER FORMS OF OBJECTIVE WRITING

    CHAPTER 17: INFORMAL INTERNAL OFFICE COMMUNICATIONS:  SHORT-HAND MEMOS AND EMAILS

    APPENDICES

    Appendix I    
    SAMPLE OF A FORMAL OBJECTIVE MEMORANDUM

    APPENDIX II    
    SAMPLE EMAIL TO SUPERVISOR

     

  • Author Information

    Daniel L. Barnett

    Dan Barnett joined William S. Richardson School of Law in 2014 from Lewis & Clark Law School, where he was the Distinguished Professor of Legal Writing. Professor Barnett also taught at Boston College Law School for over twenty years, where he received the 2004 Boston College Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2007 Teaching with New Technology Award.

    Professor Barnett has been active with the Association of American Law Schools, serving as Chair of the Section on Legal Writing, Analysis and Research and Chair of the Task force on Military Recruiting—Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues. He also was on the Board of Directors of the Legal Writing Institute and was the National Coordinator of the Campaign to Repeal the Solomon Amendments.

    Professor Barnett’s scholarship focuses on student assessment, legal writing, and innovative methodologies in law school teaching. The critiquing workshops of the Legal Writing Institute Conference and the Association of American Law Schools Workshop for New Law Teachers are based on his article, Triage in the Trenches of the Legal Writing Course: The Theory and Methodology of Analytical Critique, 38 The University of Toledo Law Review 651 (2007).

    In addition to his teaching, Professor Barnett has developed a variety of training programs for practicing lawyers, including workshops for the Office of the Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and several large law firms. In 2014, completed Putting Skills into Practice (Aspen Publishers 2014), an innovative book designed to help new practitioners make the transition from law school to practice.

    In 2002, Professor Barnett was the Visiting Professor of American Law at the University of Avignon, France. Before teaching, he practiced law at McDonough, Holland & Allen in Sacramento and Kutak Rock in New York and Omaha, specializing in corporate and securities law.

    Jane Kent Gionfriddo

    v style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: ''Trebuchet MS'', verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Jane Kent Gionfriddo began teaching in the Legal Reasoning, Research & Writing Program at Boston College Law School in 1982 and was admitted to practice in Massachusetts the same year. In 1985, she became the director of the program and held this position for twenty-two years.

    In May 1999, Professor Gionfriddo was awarded the Boston College Distinguished Teaching Award for 1999-2000. She was promoted to Professor of Legal Reasoning, Research & Writing in 2012.
    Professor Gionfriddo has held a variety of positions with the Legal Writing Institute (http://www.lwionline.org), an organization devoted to the pedagogy and scholarship of legal analysis and writing and whose almost 2000 members come from law schools and English departments in the United States as well as from foreign countries. She served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute from 1995 to 2004, and served as President from 2000 through 2002 (http://www.lwionline.org/past_presidents.html). From 1994 to 2000, she also co-edited, with several LRR& W colleagues from the Law School, the Institute’s semi-annual newsletter, &"The Second Draft.”
    Professor Gionfriddo has co-chaired many committees for the Legal Writing Institute, including the Election Committee that ran the most recent Board of Directors election and the Monograph Committee that brought forward a proposal for a monograph series to the Board of Directors. Accepting the committee’s proposal, the LWI Board appointed Professor Gionfriddo as the first Editor-in-Chief of the new Monograph Series. This series includes electronic volumes published on the Institute's web site, each one of which will be devoted to a topic relevant to teaching legal analysis and writing. In August 2009, the first volume devoted to ''The Art of Critiquing Written Work'' was posted to the web site at http://www.lwionline.org/monograph.html. From 2008 to 2010, Professor Gionfriddo also served on the Board of Editors of the Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, which publishes articles on legal analysis and writing issues.
    Professor Gionfriddo has worked as a consultant at major Boston law firms, giving presentations to and working individually with associates, and has also been a consultant at other law schools on curricular issues, including Harvard Law School. In addition, Professor Gionfriddo has presented widely, including multiple times at the Legal Writing Institute Conference, at the Association of Legal Writing Directors Conference, at the American Association of Law Schools Annual Conference, and at the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting and Conference. A co-founder of the New England Consortium of Legal Writing Teachers, a regional organization that seeks to promote excellence in teaching, Professor Gionfriddo organized an interactive workshop on analytical feedback on student writing.
    Professor Gionfriddo’s scholarship focuses on pedagogical issues concerning legal analysis and writing, including an article published in the Texas Tech Law Review on the importance of lawyers’ synthesizing cases in a sophisticated manner. This article was chosen as a lead article and awarded a Texas Tech Law Review outstanding lead article award. As a member of the American Bar Association Subcommittee on Communication Skills, Professor Gionfriddo worked as a contributing author on the second edition of the Sourcebook on Legal Writing Programs, which discusses &"best practices” in the field of legal analysis, writing and research. Most recently, she and her co-author Daniel Barnett published a first-year legal analysis and writing textbook, which is titled &"Legal Reasoning and Objective Writing: A Comprehensive Approach.”&s

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