A different kind of program

A different kind of program

All law schools offer writing courses. Our program is different in four key ways:

1. A long-standing priority. Well before most law schools retained seasoned professionals to teach writing—relying instead on a revolving door of recent grads, adjunct instructors, and even 3L students—Indiana Law’s 1Ls had the benefit of full-time legal-writing professors with significant experience in both teaching and practicing law. Our current LRW faculty collectively possess decades of teaching experience and over 25 years of practice experience as trial and appellate litigators, business lawyers, and judicial clerks.
2. A commitment to both peer and expert mentoring. Legal writing, even for students with a strong background in other kinds of writing, requires significant adjustment. To help with the adjustment, each professor recruits two dean’s writing fellows. These are successful 2Ls or 3Ls whose experience is close to the 1Ls’ and who are accessible for all manner of help and guidance, both with writing and with other study skills and even job-search strategies. And because beginning legal writers also benefit from the insights of the most experienced legal writers, each year the LRW program invites a distinguished judge to address the 1Ls on the topic of legal writing.
3. A consistent, state-of-the-art foundation. No matter which section of LRW you land in, you’ll have a similar, high-quality experience. Our LRW faculty collaborate closely—with each other, with the dean's writing fellows, and with the school’s highly skilled law librarians—to create a carefully curated progression of assignments. Using both online and traditional methods, the LRW course covers statutory and case-law research and analysis, predictive writing, trial-level advocacy, legal citation, professionalism, and writing mechanics. This foundation of core skills positions all students perfectly for the next step, whether it’s opinion writing in a judicial field placement, appellate advocacy in moot court, source-checking on law journal, academic writing in a research seminar, legal drafting in an experiential course, or on-the-job writing for a legal employer.
4. Strong follow-through. Students at Indiana Law must take at least two more writing classes beyond the first year (not just one, as at many schools), and Indiana Law offers a wide range of upper-level courses that will help you hone your writing skills. In seminar courses, students focus on academic writing in cutting-edge areas of law. In other advanced writing courses, students focus on particular legal documents or on particular areas of practice.

Upper-level research and writing courses

All of the Law School's seminars qualify as upper-level research and writing courses and fulfill the school's writing requirement. A listing of seminar courses (all of which are styled as "LXXX") appears on the school's Courses web page.

In addition, the following doctrinal courses qualify as upper-level research and writing courses:

• B791 Advanced Legal Writing
• B659 American Legal History
• B671 Appellate Practice and Procedure: Criminal Appeal: From Transcript to Argument
• B575 Constitutional Design in Multiethnic Societies
• B760 Constitutional History Colloquium
• B668 Constitutional Law II
• B714 Deliberative Leadership
• B568 Gender and The Law
• B663 Labor Law I
• B761 Law and Philanthropy
• B592 Law& and Political Theory: Institutional Analysis & Development
• B554 Legislation
• B603 Remedies and Equity
• B519 State Constitutional Law
• B588 Strategies in Critical Reading and Writing: Family Law
• B526 Tax Policy Colloquium
• B709 Transactional Drafting
• B709 Transactional Drafting: Real Estate
• B709 Transactional Drafting: Tax