Our writing professors deliver interactive workshops by in the first-year Torts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Introduction to Public and Constitutional Law seminar courses and Legal Foundations. You learn about writing for a legal audience in Writing for the LegalReader. You’ll learn tools for understanding and organizing your research and writing tasks in Think Like a Lawyer – Write Like a Pro. The difference between predictive and persuasive writing will become clear in, Advise the Client, Persuade the Court. And you’ll polish a first-year writing assignment using our five-layered approach in How to Edit Your Own Work.

You will write more in your first three months of practice than in all three years of law school. Our LWA courses give you the practical writing skills you need for any legal career you choose. And all the seminars have limited enrollment to ensure you get targeted, personal feedback.

CML 4307 Write with Purpose: Essential Skills for Lawyers You’ll practice writing legal documents with effective analysis, clarity, style, correct grammar, and cultural and gender sensitivity. You’ll practice writing sharp, clear prose, editing your own and others’ writing, and become efficient at composing and organizing any legal document.

CML 4113 Legal Writing and Social Justice (Selected Problems in Legal Practice) You’ll work on a social justice writing project of practical use to the community, a non-governmental organization, a charity, a government entity, or a vulnerable group. You polish your legal research and writing skills through in-class exercises, legal memos, and writing a persuasive document. Class work will expose you to social justice issues of the day and examples of social justice writing. Your final assignment is a legal writing project you choose aimed at a social justice goal. You can show your work to organizations that you might wish to work with in the future.

Courses You Apply For

Application details https://commonlaw.uottawa.ca/en/students/student-centre/forms

CML 3174 Dean’s Research and Writing Fellows A unique and challenging opportunity open to top achieving upper-year students with strong writing skills and demonstrated leadership abilities. Dean’s Fellows work with a lawyer-mentor on an advanced and real research problem and receive intensive writing instruction from the Professor. Dean’s Fellows learn new research skills and produce high quality written work that showcases their writing skills. Fellows engage their leadership and research skills by leading small tutorial sessions of the first-year course, Legal Foundations CML 1101. The course satisfies the Major Paper Requirement.

CML 4113 Legal Writing Portfolio and Leadership (Selected Problems in Legal Practice) Students with excellent writing and interpersonal skills produce high-quality legal writing to showcase to future employers. Students learn self-editing and peer mentoring skills. Students who demonstrate outstanding writing and interpersonal skills are eligible to become paid Legal Writing Academy Peer Mentors during the academic year.

 CML 4113 Legal Memos Made Easy (Selected Problems in Legal Practice): Online Summer Course. Over the summer you’ll gain legal analysis and writing skills as you write and polish a legal memo you can use as a writing sample. You work primarily at your own pace to fit the course work with your summer work schedule. Students report spending three-ten hours a week completing the course modules. The Professor supports your summer work with feedback, check-in meetings, an editing class, and an individual meeting before you submit your graded memo. And from time-to-time you’ll meet with some experienced peers. (For 2022 we’re offering a Summer-Fall version with Fall term Saturday workshop sessions to satisfy the 30-in person credit requirement for students graduating in 2023).

Students looking for legal writing and editing strategies or advice on overcoming writer’s block, or help understanding a writing assignment, or a refresher on the elements of good structure or editing for clarity can sign-up for an individual 45-minute Legal Writing Conference with a LWA Writing Leader. Our Writing Leaders are upper-year law students with strong legal writing and analysis skills, trained as legal writing peer-mentors to help other students become better writers. You can bring a completed assignment or a work-in-progress to the conference. Please note that Writing Leaders do not assist students with content.

To sign up go to the Legal Writing Academy Student Resources course on Brightspace and look for the tab Writing Conferences. 

Legal Memos Made Easy doubles as a resource for writing predictive legal memos and developing targeted skills like writing strong introductions, clear issue statements, and well-organized and complete facts. Getting Ready to Write helps students organize research for any legal document Crafting the Memo’s Parts gives in-depth instruction on specific memo components. Interactive online exercises with immediate feedback in the form of sample answers, and audio and video comments. Two Sample Memos, based on real-life client narratives, create a writer-mentor experience though embedded text, audio and video “Practice Tips” In the Practice Tips, Anna, a summer student (Hopper v Summervale), and Ben, a first-year associate (Bradley v Tech World), explain their writing choices followed by an experienced lawyer-mentor’s comments on these novice legal writer’s work. The lawyer mentors answer often-asked questions, and elaborate on the memo elements.

Edit Your Own Work demonstrates a practical, five-layered approach to editing any legal document.  Each layer concentrates on a different editing task to keep students from becoming overwhelmed by editing everything all at once and to maximize editing power. Each layer starts with a brief overview and short exercises that students use to self-diagnose their skills level. Then students can try editing strategies, pre-tested by our students. As they go through the layers, students construct a personal editing checklist that they can modify in the future as they master different editing steps.

Students can access other helpful legal writing resources through the Legal Writing Academy Student Resources page on Brightspace.