Legal Practice and Methods

The First‑Year Course

In Legal Practice and Methods, students begin to acquire many of the most essential skills critical to becoming a good lawyer. In this year‑long course, first‑year students learn, through simulated lawsuits, to approach and solve problems as lawyers do and to write clear, concise, and analytical trial briefs and office memoranda.

Professor Jo Ellen Lewis meeting with students
Professor Jo Ellen Lewis and Students

Washington University School of Law has six full‑time faculty who only teach Legal Practice I: Objective Analysis and Reasoning. Students meet twice a week in small groups where they discuss recent writing projects with their instructor. This format allows students to build on their previous week's work, maximizing their opportunities for success and further developing their analytical skills. Students receive significant individual written feedback on their major writing projects.  In addition, they meet in small groups with one of six professional librarian-lecturers to learn the fundamentals of legal research and the development of research strategy, Legal Research Methodologies. Writing projects integrate the research and writing components of the course.

Upper Class Research & Writing

After the first year, all students complete at least one seminar. Seminars serve a dual purpose in the curriculum at Washington University School of Law: They provide students with the opportunity to hone their skills by concentrating on a paper or series of papers that require individual research, writing, and rewriting‑with guidance and feedback from a faculty member. Seminars also allow students to explore in depth a specialized area of the law. To achieve these twin objectives, each seminar has a limited enrollment of 16 students (20 upon permission of the teacher), and the coverage of the seminar typically encompasses topics on which the professor has developed expertise through his or her own publications.

Studying in WULS Library Reading Room

Several different electives complement the seminar requirement. The supervised research program allows a student to make an individualized arrangement with a teacher to earn academic credit for independent study, based on legal research and a paper. Our Practical Skills Training program provides many opportunities for legal writing, including numerous planning and drafting courses and competitions that entail written work, such as the briefs required in our many different Moot Court programs.  Students can also choose to take Advanced Legal Research. Our law reviews - the Washington University Law Review, the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy, and Washington University Global Studies Law Review- offer full participation in the publication process, including research, writing, article preparation and selection, editing, and management responsibilities. In several other courses throughout the upperclass curriculum students write papers in addition to or instead of the traditional final examination.

Listed below are our most commonly offered seminars. Not all seminars listed are offered each year. Representative seminar offerings (based on the 2005-2006 curriculum) include:

 

Washington University Law students studying in the Library

Academics