The legal marketplace demands that law graduates enter the profession with strong research, analysis, and communication skills. To prepare Rutgers students for mastery in this area, first-year students participate in a yearlong program in legal research, analysis, writing, and oral argument. This 4-credit program consists of a graded two-credit course each semester, taught by a talented group of full-time, experienced faculty members. With class size of approximately 20 students, the course is designed to provide students with extensive individual attention. Class time is spent primarily on exercises in which the class reviews various research, analysis, writing, argument, and editing skills and strategies.
The fall term research and writing course combines an introduction to the basic tools of legal research with instruction and practice in legal writing and analysis. Students learn how to find and analyze primary legal authority, such as cases and statutes, and secondary materials, such as treatises and law reviews. They complete a series of library assignments and an integrated research exercise. Students are then introduced to computer-assisted research and are trained in LEXIS and Westlaw at the end of the term.
In the fall, students also write several legal memoranda, some of which must be rewritten, and complete other, shorter assignments. The memoranda require that students learn legal analysis, legal writing style, format, and citation form. The legal memoranda assignments are presented as simulated case files to provide students with practical experience working with legal documents and developing fact analysis skills. Through these assignments, students learn and practice their analytic ability, increase their substantive knowledge, and reinforce research skills. The rewrites and required conferences with writing professors and teaching assistants allow for individual attention to each student`s progress in mastering the fundamentals of legal analysis and legal writing. Students also begin developing their oral skills in mock briefings of the senior partner on the legal issues in the memo assignments.
During the spring term, Moot Court I builds on the research and writing skills learned in the fall. Students switch from writing predictive, objective memoranda to crafting persuasive legal arguments in written briefs and oral arguments. Their major written assignment for the spring is a mock brief to a court, which presents a new issue and requires extensive research. In writing the brief, students learn the fundamental rhetorical concerns and methods of persuading a judicial audience. Students also participate in an oral argument based on the appellate brief before a three-judge panel of writing faculty, practitioners, and teaching assistants. This program of carefully supervised instruction helps students become responsible for their own learning and helps them develop the competence and attitudes needed for self-directed learning throughout their legal careers.
All students are required to take a 2-credit (or, at times, 3-credit) upper-level course in professional responsibility. The course examines important practical and ethical issues for future lawyers, such as attorney-client confidentiality, conflict of interest, perjury, fee arrangements, advertising, and sanctions for frivolous conduct.
