Academics

The Duquesne University School of Law is serious about providing a top-notch legal research and writing program and graduating well-trained students. Dean Donald J. Guter understands the importance of legal writing and he has made the writing program a priority for the law school.  In fall 2007, Professor Jan M. Levine, a nationally-known expert in the field of legal research and writing, joined the the Law School as its first full-time legal research and writing program director.  Additionally, a commitment of approximately $400,000 was secured from a distinguished alumnus for a new Legal Research and Writing Center, to be named the Alfred and Bridget Peláez Writing Center, to  honor one of Duquesne's senior faculty members, Professor Al Peláez, and his late wife.  This new home for our writing program will be located within the school's Center for Legal Information, our law library. Construction will begin in the spring of 2009, and the new center will open for the 2009/10 academic year. To see a draft floorplan, click here; to see a 3-D movie tour of the draft, click here.

Under Professor Levine's leadership the school has implemented a new curriculum for the required legal research and writing courses.   The new curriculum will challenge students and be more intensive than any similar courses the school has offered before. 

Instruction in modern law schools is founded on the idea of teaching each student to "think like a lawyer," and that concept is very accurate; the added dimension is that in the Legal Research and Writing course students learn the basics of "writing and speaking like a lawyer."  As students acquire these communication skills, professors will offer them intensive individual feedback.  Students will practice and hone these skills for the rest of their career in law school examinations, journal writing, and all of their law-related jobs.

“Duquesne’s new writing program is designed to provide students with the fundamental writing skills that all lawyers need,” said Levine. “Legal writing is the only practical skills course required of students in most law schools. New law students quickly realize how much lawyers must read, but most students simply don’t realize how much lawyers write. Our students must appreciate that lawyers are professional writers, preparing transactional and litigation documents, of course, but also writing correspondence and office memoranda, drafting legislation and regulations, crafting speeches, and playing a critical role in the creation of business documents and government papers. Any lawyer knows that if you can’t write effectively, you won’t be successful.”

Levine lists three keys to an effective writing program: “First, you must have dedicated students willing to do far more writing than they’ve ever had to do before. As I always tell my students, the average lawyer writes more than Stephen King; he or she just won’t make as much money! Second, you need a small student-to-teacher ratio, because students need individual guidance, and the best way to provide that is to have the faculty critique each student’s work and then meet with the writer for an individual conference, leading to a revision. Third, classes should be discussion-based seminars, in which students and faculty engage in a open dialogue about legal analysis and the structure of the documents, and in which there is no ‘hiding the ball’ about the material at hand.”

Fall Semester

During the summer before school begins, first-year law students will be sent excerpts from the writing and research texts, so they can "hit the ground running" for the first week of the course, which will be the focus of an expanded week-long law school orientation program starting in August 2008.

The fall semester of the legal research and writing course will introduce the tools and techniques that are essential to law practice and legal scholarship:  legal analysis, research using print sources and computers, and objective writing. 

The progression of hands-on assignments has been planned very carefully.  Students are expected to make mistakes and to learn from their mistakes, but not repeat them.  The successive assignments become increasingly complex and require repeated practice of earlier techniques as the students acquire new skills, in a process that has been described as a recursive loop.

In the spring semester, students will address additional research skills and learn the techniques of persuasive writing and oral advocacy via an appellate advocacy assignment.

“The spring semester’s moot court program will give the students their first opportunity to write, talk, look, and act like real lawyers,” Levine said. “For most students, the process of writing an appellate brief and delivering an oral argument is a tremendous experience, and probably the capstone of the first year of law school."

Source: Adapted from the Alum News (Fall 2007)