Apply Now
Request Info

Mastering essential lawyering skills

Out of all the first-year law classes, perhaps the most important to your success as a law student and development as a lawyer are the Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing courses. Compared to much of the law school core curriculum, courses in legal writing and research are a fairly new development at law schools throughout the country, but they've quickly become an integral component in developing the skills of future lawyers.

The importance of legal writing

Regardless of what type of law you end up practicing, your success and reputation will begin and end with the skills you start developing in LARW. No lawyer makes it through their career without knowing how to find legal precedent, read statutes and cases to understand the law, and communicate ideas through writing. That's why, in preparing practice-ready lawyers, Washburn Law puts a heavy emphasis on our legal analysis, research, and writing curriculum. We want our students to leave our school confident that they can perform the necessary work of a lawyer. That's why our LARW program has consistently maintained a top national rank amongst law schools, and why employers speak so highly about the work our graduates do when they start practice.
From basics to advocacy: the LARW curriculum Arguably the biggest and most important skills in the practice of law are the ability to find applicable legal standards and convey arguments through writing. Accordingly, the classes that teach you how to do this will be among the first you put into practice. At Washburn Law, the legal writing curriculum is divided into two courses that are required of all first-year students: Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing I and II.

In their first semester, all students are assigned to one of our LARW I sections. In this course, students are introduced to:

  • the basic structures and operations of federal, state, and tribal court systems;
  • the legal research tools available for locating and analyzing legal standards and
  • the standard structures of legal argumentation.

Through a combination of readings, in-class exercises, and problem-based writing assignments, students learn how to identify, analyze, and build legal arguments, focusing mostly on objective legal analysis.

This course typically involves two major assignments:

  • a "closed" midterm memo in which students are provided with the law and cases they should use in their analysis of a client’s legal problem and
  • an "open" final memo that requires students to conduct independent legal research to analyze another client problem.
Other assignments may include such things as client letters, emails, or other writings that ask students to translate the legal issues for a broader audience.

Students then take on LARW II during their second semester, which sees them writing advocacy-focused documents such as motions and appellate briefs. Throughout this semester, students are tasked with:

  • researching the issue on their own,
  • developing an understanding of the law and
  • anticipating counterarguments.
After turning in a final brief near the end of the semester, students are then tasked with presenting oral appellate arguments to a panel of (professor) judges. This unique opportunity gives students the chance to build yet another set of skills by crafting live arguments about the legal issues they’ve been studying in a practical simulation. While it sounds nerve-wracking, students have typically enjoyed getting the chance to participate in this exercise and act like real attorneys.

After finishing our 1L LARW curriculum, students aren't out of opportunities to continue building on their abilities. We offer several courses that further develop the skills taught in LARW.

Our Writing for Law Practice course allows students to develop skills in drafting several different types of legal documents to build a broad understanding of the different forms of legal argument.

In addition, we offer a few different practice-specific writing classes that introduce students to the specific types of drafting necessary for individual fields, such as:

  • Transactional Drafting,
  • Writing for Debtor-Creditor Practice,
  • Writing for the Government Client and
  • Probate Procedure and Drafting, to name a few.
Students can also take classes like Advanced Oral Argument or Trial Advocacy to get more practice delivering oral legal arguments. But regardless of the courses students take, they will heavily employ the skills they develop in LARW I & II and continue to develop them throughout their law school classes and into practice.