Week 3 - Analyzing Issues in Legal Memos
Overview
This week we're going to add one more piece to the legal reasoning unit: analyzing an issue for a particular document, in this case a legal memo. If you haven't yet, read the "Legal Memorandum" assignment under "Major Assignments" in the navigation menu.
It's important you understand the genre you're being asked to produce. The exercises we've been doing are academic exercises written for a teacher to show that you know how to do something. In contrast, a legal memo is written for someone about the likely outcome of a legal issue. It is a predictive, informative document, and it is supposed to be objective--i.e., not take sides.
The assignment asks you to assume you are a clerk in a law office, and one of the parties from the Chris Connors incident has come to the firm to discuss his or her legal options. As a clerk, you are asked to discuss all the issues this person might have, along with a prediction about the likely result. [This assignment is different from the one in the textbook. We are just using the book's scenario, not its assignment.]
Even though the memos are objective, they will still be different depending on who you decide has come to the office to discuss the legal options. If Chris Connors is the potential client, she will be wanting to know about some lawsuits she might bring in the situation as well as some lawsuits she might have to defend. Likewise, if Marvin Bailey or Wilson Smith are the potential client, they will be wondering about lawsuits they can bring or might have to defend.
It's important you understand the genre you're being asked to produce. The exercises we've been doing are academic exercises written for a teacher to show that you know how to do something. In contrast, a legal memo is written for someone about the likely outcome of a legal issue. It is a predictive, informative document, and it is supposed to be objective--i.e., not take sides.
The assignment asks you to assume you are a clerk in a law office, and one of the parties from the Chris Connors incident has come to the firm to discuss his or her legal options. As a clerk, you are asked to discuss all the issues this person might have, along with a prediction about the likely result. [This assignment is different from the one in the textbook. We are just using the book's scenario, not its assignment.]
Even though the memos are objective, they will still be different depending on who you decide has come to the office to discuss the legal options. If Chris Connors is the potential client, she will be wanting to know about some lawsuits she might bring in the situation as well as some lawsuits she might have to defend. Likewise, if Marvin Bailey or Wilson Smith are the potential client, they will be wondering about lawsuits they can bring or might have to defend.
Reading
- Skim the "Sample Memos" in the Legal Memos Made Easy site. Note that these are researched memos supported with case law so they are much longer than our memos will be. For us, we will just assume the laws are what are given.
- Read all the parts under "Crafting the Memo's Parts" in the same site.
- Read this sample memo on a different topic from an earlier class.
Activities
- Participate in a check-in Tuesday discussion in Bb.
- Write a first draft of the legal memo and share it as a Google Doc with your group by Thursday, February 7, 2019. I will tell you the groups after Tuesday. Instructions for Peer Review are in a separate tab on the navigation.
Remember there is a guide to using Google Docs on the technology page.
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