Legal Writing Manual

Fourth Edition

Jean Mangan

With Dylan Cohen, Frank Easterlin, Brittany Goad, Gabrielle Gravel, Chase Lyndale, George “Max” Miseyko, and Emily Whitest

Graphics by Connely Doizé

The first edition of this manual was made possible with funding from the University of Georgia’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost’s Affordable Materials Course Grant.

The second edition of this manual was made possible with funding from Affordable Learning Georgia’s Continuous Improvement Grant Round 19.

The third edition of this manual was made possible with funding from Affordable Learning Georgia’s Continuous Improvement Grant Round 21.

The fourth edition of this manual was made possible with funding from Affordable Learning Georgia’s Continuous Improvement Grant Round 26.

This work is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

CC BY-SA 4.0

Acknowledgements

I could not have completed this work without the contributions of so many:

Nasreena Ali

Meghan Anthony

Joy Bonner

Shane Booth

Meredith Bradshaw

Christopher Brock

Dylan Cohen

Connely Doizé

Frank Easterlin

Zoe Ferguson

Jonah Griego

Jordana Friedman

Brittany Goad

Barbara Goetz

Victor Goetz

Gabrielle Gravel

Courtney Hogan

Emily Johnson

Thomas Kadri

Haley Kairab

Ian Kesckes

Jun Tai Kim

Andrew King

Chase Lyndale

Fernanda Mackey

Catherine Mangan

Rebecca Mangan

Trevor Mangan

Georgia McPeak

George “Max” Miseyko

Brandon Moseley

Cara Musciano

Abigail Olson

Ashley Dennis Presley

D’Andra Millsap Shu

Robert Smith

Emily Whitest

Mya Whitest

Ariane Williams

Charles Wells

Stephen Wolfson

Michelle Zakarin

Table of Contents

Part A: Reading Legal Sources

1. Sources of Law and Court Systems
2. Reading Cases
3. Briefing Cases
4. Briefing Cases Examples
5. Legal Phrases
6. Policy

Part B: Interpreting Legal Sources

1. The Legal Reader Audience
2. Rule Synthesis
3. Rule Synthesis Examples
4. Case Synthesis
5. Case Synthesis Examples

Part C: Writing with Legal Sources

1. Prewriting
2. CREAC Legal Writing Paradigm
3. Legal Citation
4. Local Rules and Standing Orders
5. Predictive Writing
6. Persuasive Writing
7. Summary of Law Examples
8. Parts of a Memorandum
9. Memo Examples
10. Parts of an Appellate Brief
11. Brief Examples
12. Transitions and Signposting
13. Writing for Law School Exams
14. Assessing Your Own Work
15. Providing Feedback to Others

Part D: Studying Legal Sources

1. Time Management
2. Introduction to Metacognition
3. Start to Study Skills

This flowchart, entitled Introduction to Legal Writing Flowchart, shows the progression of the concepts that are learned in a first year legal writing class.

The top bar contains the phrases “Editing and revising,” “punctuation, grammar, and spelling,” “transitions and signposting,” “legal citation,” and “organization and structure” with arrows going down to Summary of Law, Memorandum, and Brief. This part of the visual is intended to show that the concepts contained in the top bar will apply to all of the legal writing documents produced in the class.

There is a heading, “Objective Writing,” in the top left corner of a gray box that contains additional text. The contents in the gray box are concepts and skills that are developed in anticipation of writing a Summary of Law and a Memorandum. There are three columns of text in the gray box.

The lefthand column in the gray box is inset into a blue box. Two gray rectangles are side by side. The lefthand rectangle states, “Reading and briefing cases and other law.” The righthand rectangle states, “Big picture on where laws come from and how they work together.” Each rectangle has an arrow coming from it and pointing down to a gray triangle that is below the rectangles.

In the gray triangle, there is text that states, “Shifting focus from the source of law to the issues.” An arrow extends down from that gray triangle to a thin gray rectangle with text that states, “Finding and Synthesizing Rules.” There is an arrow extending down from that rectangle to another thin gray rectangle with text that states “Law description.” There is an arrow extending down from that rectangle to another thin gray rectangle with text that states “Synthesis.”

At the bottom of the blue box that contains the lefthand column of information is a heading that states, “Summary of Law.” The intent of this heading is to indicate that the information contained in the shapes and text above the heading are concepts and skills that are developed in anticipation of writing a Summary of Law.

From the left hand column extends arrows pointing to the middle column of text. The middle column of text has at the top a gray rectangle that contains text stating, “Determine Relevant Facts” and immediately below it is another gray rectangle that contains text stating, “Facts.” There is a double-sided arrow that is between the two gray rectangles that is intended to indicate that a legal writer will need to go between the facts given, both for a particular situation and in case law, and the relevant facts for the specific legal question, in a reiterative process.

Beneath the two gray fact rectangles is a gray diamond with a blue diamond inset into it and contains text that states, “Fact-Matching” and “Analogy & Distinction.” There is a double-sided arrow that is between the two phrases that is intended to indicate that a legal writer will use fact-matching and analogy and distinction in a reiterative process together. There is an arrow going from the diamond back to the fact rectangles to indicate that fact-matching and analogy and distinction will impact the reiterative process of using facts to determine what facts are relevant in a particular situation.

From the gray and blue diamond extends an arrow pointing down to two gray rectangles that are stacked on top of each other. The first upper rectangle contains text that states, “Legal Analysis” and the second lower rectangle contains text that states, “Legal Research.” There is a double-sided arrow that is between the two phrases that is intended to indicate that a legal writer will use legal analysis and legal research in a reiterative process together.

The third and righthand column of text in the gray box is contained within a blue box. There are four gray rectangles in this column. The top rectangle contains text that states, “Statement of Facts.” The second from the top rectangle contains text that states, “Question Presented.” The third from the top rectangle contains text that states, “Brief Answer.” There is a double-sided arrow that is between the two rectangles that is intended to indicate that a Question Presented and a Brief Answer will inform the other one on the proper information to contain, and that modifying one of them will likely require modifying the other. The bottom rectangle contains text that states, “Discussion.” At the bottom of the blue box that contains the lefthand column of information is a heading that states, “Memorandum.” The intent of this heading is to indicate that the information contained in the shapes and text above the heading are components of a Memorandum, which is a common type of legal document.

There are arrows extending between the middle column and the righthand column to indicate that the concepts and skills in the middle column are used, in conjunction with the concepts and skills in the lefthand column, to write the Memorandum.

As a whole, the gray box with the three columns, as described in more detail above, contains the concepts and skills that build on each other to develop legal analysis and produce written documents in the part of a legal writing class covering objective writing. This part typically comes before the class covering persuasive writing.

Next to the large gray box is a repetition of the middle column contained in the large gray box. Above that repeated column is the phrase “persuasive shift” that is meant to indicate that the same set of concepts and skills previously learned in objective writing to produce documents will also be used to write persuasive documents, but there will be a change in approach because of the nature of persuasive writing..

For the reader’s benefit, the content of the repeated column is written out again here. From the left hand column extends arrows pointing to the middle column of text. The middle column of text has at the top a gray rectangle that contains text stating, “Determine Relevant Facts” and immediately below it is another gray rectangle that contains text stating, “Facts.” There is a double-sided arrow that is between the two gray rectangles that is intended to indicate that a legal writer will need to go between the facts given, both for a particular situation and in case law, and the relevant facts for the specific legal question, in a reiterative process.

Beneath the two gray fact rectangles is a gray diamond with a blue diamond inset into it and contains text that states, “Fact-Matching” and “Analogy & Distinction.” There is a double-sided arrow that is between the two phrases that is intended to indicate that a legal writer will use fact-matching and analogy and distinction in a reiterative process together. There is an arrow going from the diamond back to the fact rectangles to indicate that fact-matching and analogy and distinction will impact the reiterative process of using facts to determine what facts are relevant in a particular situation.

From the gray and blue diamond extends an arrow pointing down to two gray rectangles that are stacked on top of each other. The first upper rectangle contains text that states, “Legal Analysis” and the second lower rectangle contains text that states, “Legal Research.” There is a double-sided arrow that is between the two phrases that is intended to indicate that a legal writer will use legal analysis and legal research in a reiterative process together.

The final part of this flowchart is a yellow box that contains the heading, “Persuasive Writing.” Within the yellow box is a blue box that contains eleven gray rectangles. The first rectangle contains text that states, “Title Page.” The second rectangle contains text that states, “Table of Contents.” The third rectangle contains text that states, “Table of Authorities.” The fourth rectangle contains text that states, “Question Presented.” The fifth rectangle contains text that states, “Statutes Involved.” The sixth rectangle contains text that states, “Standard of Review.” The seventh rectangle states, “Summary of Argument.” The eighth rectangle contains text that states, “Statement of Facts.” The ninth rectangle contains text that states, “Argument.” The tenth rectangle contains text that states, “Conclusion.” The eleventh and final rectangle contains text that states, “Closing.”

There are several arrows from the gray box with the heading “Objective Writing” extending to the various rectangles in the yellow box with the heading “Persuasive Writing” that are intended to indicate the connections between components of objective writing and their persuasive writing analogues.

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