My major objection to the UCLA legal writing curriculum is that it puts zero emphasis on critical & analytic legal thought -- all its time is spent on research fundamentals & use of caselaw.

This is not at all a bad thing -- knowing how to use caselaw is a worthy endeavor for the 1L -- but I do notice that the class only meets 3 times a week and still feels well-padded. It's not like there's not time to address some more sophisticated topics.

Apparently law schools have been under pressure in the last 10 yrs to fix up their writing curricula since law firms were tired of hiring recent grads who couldn't write. The new approach seems to arise from the assumption that writing is the prerequisite skill for thinking; however I think it's the other way around.

The net effect is that at the end, 300 people will have gone through a year of law school without completing a single piece of writing requiring critical, creative thinking. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing.

When I am king of legal writing*, the nuts & bolts will be served first semester, and 2nd semester people will have to be more self-directed in finding, researching and writing about a topic.

* ie., never

09 Feb 05