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May 2008
Interview with Michael
Santana of LawBoost.com, continued
What are law school grades based upon?
Law school grades are a direct reflection of one important
skill: the ability to write well.
In law school, the reason a student's ability to get strong
grades is so influenced by that student's ability to write
well is because in law school almost all the tests are essay
exams, not multiple choice or short answer exams. An
entering law student I worked with said it best: "It doesn't
matter how well I know the black letter law, if I can't
write a logical, concise, and complete analyses of legal
questions then I won't succeed."
A common complaint among first year law students is that the
grades they receive do not accurately reflect their
understanding of their courses. Many of these students are
correct. The inconsistency between the understanding of a
subject and the grade received for that subject is usually
because a student does not possess strong writing skills.
Law school grading is very different from the type of
grading in your undergraduate studies. In college, most
professors are grading based on whether the content of the
student's answer is correct and not whether the answer is
well written (quality). In law school, students are graded
on both content and quality. When I say quality, I mean
things such as active and passive voice, topic sentences,
and using possessives correctly.
The reason many students do not exhibit strong writing
skills in the manner that is expected in law school is
because of the difference between academic writing and legal
writing. Academic writing is the type of writing performed
by students throughout their education including their
undergraduate education.
In academic writing, often the writer (the student) provides
the reader (the professor) with as much information as
possible regarding the question the student needs to answer.
In this type of writing whatever the student knows about a
subject is provided to the professor without much concern as
to how well the answer is written and the precise relevance
of the information being provided.
Legal writing is different. Legal writing is a type of
professional writing. By professional writing I mean the
type of writing that is done in the professional world. In
professional writing the focus is on the reader, not the
writer. In professional writing, and legal writing, all that
is important is how well the reader is informed, and in this
type of writing readers want things written clearly,
concisely, and precisely.
If a student wrote a lot during undergrad and received
good grades, shouldn't the student's writing skills be
strong enough to do well in law school?
Maybe. Consider this comment from another entering law
student I worked with: "I was a good writer as an undergrad
English major, but legal writing is totally different."
Lawboost.com helps entering students
establish a solid academic transition for law school,
especially in the area of writing.
In their program, students have the opportunity to perform a
number of first-semester law school writing assignments and
to have four of those assignments critiqued. The entire
focus is on helping incoming law students develop the skills
necessary to do well in law school. Classes are available
live online; a Self-Prep Program is also available. For more
information, visit their
website.
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