Paper Chase
This torts paper is driving me crazy.We have to write a 6-8 page decision as if we were a district court judge deciding a case based on a provided fact pattern. (UT requires a writing assignment for the one class you have in small section, and uses this as reason to bump the class weight up to 5 units instead of 4) We are not supposed to do any research, and rely solely upon two provided cases, neither of which are longer than 4 pages. So you tell me, with barely any material at all, what exactly am I supposed to write about for 6-8 pages?
Moreover, it's well known that my torts professor is a fan of brevity. The sections of the casebook which he edited have incredibly short opinons, with barely any additional notes. It's odd to get an opinion that goes for more than three pages. So why would he require that we be so verbose in these stupid papers?
I've been working on this thing for a week, and at 4 and a half pages, I'm convinced that I've more than adequately addressed every legal issue that could possibly be tortured from this hypo, and yet, I'm now forced to decide whether to insert some rambling, repetitive bullshit or change my font to Courier New. The fact that I'm incredibly hungover from bar golf last night isn't helping.
posted by The Lioness @ 3:46 PM
11 Comments:
Profs hate grading papers. Change your spacing to 2.25 (available in Format|Paragraph for MS Word), flip it to courier new, and move on with your life. He'll never know or care.
IMHO.
Could work. Best of luck to you tonight with that, Tra...I myself am knee-deep in open-memo rewrite territory. Fun times ahead tonight. Just about to make a run to the CVS for a 12 pack of Mt. Dew. Need something to keep my focus.
Haven't you been paying attention in LRW?
If you really CREAC hard and come up with a good discussion of the facts, you can make just about anything be 6-8 pages long.
Don't skimp on explanation!
Does UT subscribe to the CREAC model also? My school does. F CRuPAC, IRAC, and all those other models.
Yep. UT is a CREAC has thrown its support to CREAC.
Seriously, I don't see 6-8 being hard to pull. If this thing is double-spaced, the facts section is probably a page easy if not more. The procedural part is at least half a page and the conclusion is probably another half page. That's 2-2.5 already. Then you do your rule statement and explanation. That's probably another page. After that you've got application. You can kill tons of pages explaing the cases and applying principles.
1Ls are so useless.
Glannon's E&E will help you fill out the sparse spots.
Perhaps I should have explained I wasn't asking for suggestions, simply venting. I especially love the poster who claimed I was useless and told me how to write my paper without ever seeing the assignment. Regardless, the paper was finished yesterday, turned in today, and met the page limit and then some.
Actually, I believe the 6:13 PM poster said that 1Ls (as in, not just you) were useless. But good job taking insult to a generalized statement!
I think that Dagny might be the best new UT blogger.
Legal writing is formulaic so there wasn't really a need to see the project.
You'll learn. Don't worry.
Am I the only person who likes Legal Writing?
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