One Month In - Legal Writing

I realized that I haven't been blogging much about my classes at all. I have the same roster of classes that just about every student in lawcademia has. Civil Procedure and Criminal Law, Contracts and Torts and a section of Legal Writing.

My Legal Writing and Research class is entertaining, but a huge time suck. We receive grades for this just like any other class. The paper that was due today is a good example. We received a closed universe packet containing a fact pattern, statutes and several appellate case briefs. Our mission, should we wish to accept it, was to suss everything out, develop questions presented and discussion sections and then IRAC the issues. 8 page limit. The paper was assigned last Wednesday, and due today. The exam this was practice for will be assigned on Friday afternoon and due on Monday morning.
Friday night I read the material and then went to bed while thinking about what I'd read, I wanted to put the material through my unconscious buffer. Saturday, I made a marginal attempt to list the issues, and then went to bed. Sunday morning I got up early and began by rereading the material. By Sunday night I had started writing and the majority of my paper was written by 3am when I called it quits. My housemate had been working on a similar paper and stayed up even later. I think we were good role models for each other that night, toiling away separately, yet together. By Monday night, the paper was basically written and mostly revised. Tuesday afternoon, Death and Taxes picked it over and told me to quit IRARARARCing. 5 more hours for more revisions. Have you noticed how much time this has taken??

I am not happy that it took an entire week to write a paper that is practice for an exam I will have only two days to write. Grr. At the very least I am hoping that the practice paper will provide a good roadmap for the exam.

One Happy Note: For once, I actually hit the page limit (I tacked on a policy consideration at the end)! One of my mentors said that discussing policy considerations is the difference between A papers and B papers, and that this extends to essay questions on exams as well. Hit all the issues, but be sure to make the time and space for policy issues.