AALS Discussion Group

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Session Type: AALS Discussion Groups

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel

Room: Wilson A

Floor: Mezzanine Level

This discussion group will explore pedagogical issues that bubble beneath the surface for legal writing professors from different generations. A wide range of writing, teaching, and law practice experiences inform legal writing professors as they help today’s law students prepare for an unknowable future. Ignoring or gliding past generational differences may mean students graduate with very different instruction and practice in fundamental legal skills. Looking purposefully at generational differences in legal writing pedagogy may enable us to identify and better use the most helpful things that each generation of professors contributes. We may be able to identify legal writing traditions that may now need to receive less emphasis than before or be sunset altogether. And we may be able to identify aspects of legal communications that need to receive more emphasis or be introduced for the first time into the legal writing curriculum.