What People Are Saying: The Complete Legal Writer

“The Complete Legal Writer offers a fresh and creative take on the basics of legal writing. I have used its approach to genre discovery to give students the tools to write any kind of legal document. This book is smart, accessible, and thorough. Students will want to hang onto this book and have it within arm’s reach as they continue law school and head out into practicing law.”

-Anne Ralph, Clinical Professor of Law, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University

“The Complete Legal Writer promises much and delivers more. The text covers fundamental concepts including legal logic and analysis, research methodology, the writing process, and citation literacy. The overall tone is refreshingly readable and will undoubtedly resonate with students. What sets the text apart is not the wide variety of sample legal documents offered, but its potential to equip students with a method of evaluating all documents/genres using an approach that will prepare them to write and ultimately to practice more effectively. The rhetorical legal genre approach is quite a discovery, and no law library collection would be complete without this book.”

–Law Library Journal

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“This uniquely reader-centered text indeed empowers students to grow into complete legal writers. The authors gently yet firmly guide students through ‘genre discovery’: careful study of sample legal documents, by which students construct for themselves the conceptual frameworks that writers of such documents need. Students thus till the soil, plant seeds of understanding, and harvest their own insights—and thereby enjoy ‘ground-up’ rather than ‘top-down’ learning that is refreshingly autonomous and remarkably effective.”

-Craig T. Smith, Assistant Dean for the Writing and Learning Resources Center and Clinical Professor of Law, UNC School of Law

“The Complete Legal Writer lives up to its name: it presents a comprehensive, fresh, and intuitive approach to teaching legal writing that invites students to confidently and enthusiastically cross the divide between their prior writing experiences and the world of legal writing. By giving students the tools they need to critically examine the documents that lawyers write, the authors’ genre-discovery approach empowers students to meet (and exceed) the expectations of their new reading audience, even when they are faced with the challenge of writing a document they may not have seen before. With the text’s warm tone, humorous touches, and vivid examples, the authors have hit a homerun that will engage faculty and students alike while arming students with skills they will use throughout their professional lives.”

-Ruth Ann McKinney, Emerita Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law

What People Are Saying: The Complete Bar Writer

The Complete Bar Writer is the resource bar takers need to score high on the written portion of the bar exam, especially the MPT. In an easy-to-read follow-up to their successful The Complete Legal Writer, the authors creatively tie the legal research and writing skills students develop in their 1L year to success on the essay and MPT portions of the bar exam. Test takers and academic support professionals will particularly appreciate the step by step process that the book offers for successfully completing the MPT, as well as the annotated samples of the commonly tested MPT tasks. Guidance on reverse outlining, self-assessment, and test-taking strategies is icing on the cake. With The Complete Bar Writer you can write your way to a passing score on the bar exam.

-O.J. Salinas, Director, Academic Excellence Program and Clinical Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law

The Complete Bar Writer is essential not just for effective bar prep but also legal practice. It is replete with strategies to analyze and write the Multistate Performance Test (MPT) efficiently and effectively by helping bar takers understand, dissect, and tackle the MPT under time pressure. But it doesn’t stop there. Like its older sister, the Complete Legal Writer, this text helps its readers develop skills and habits necessary for effective law practice. Recognizing that the bar exam is the beginning not the end of the road, The Complete Bar Writer draws on the genre discovery approach to help bar takers prepare to write any task they might receive as part of the MPT as well as in their subsequent practice. Additionally, by emphasizing legal writing techniques and principles, this new text empowers bar takers to develop habits of practice, self-assessment, and refining their legal writing abilities to both pass the bar and be highly effective attorneys.

-Kaci Bishop, Clinical Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law