BEGINNING LEGAL WRITERS IN THEIR OWN WORDS: WHY THE FIRST WEEKS OF LEGAL WRITING ARE SO TOUGH AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

As long-time legal writing professors, we have observed anecdotally that many of the first-year students in our legal writing classes, although typically bright and hard-working, struggle to effectively grasp the fundamental skills of legal analysis and legal writing. This struggle manifests itself especially clearly during the first few weeks of legal writing instruction and often leads to a high frustration level that tends to persist throughout the first year of legal writing (and indeed may never be overcome). With these students in mind, we undertook a research project designed to help us better understand the nature of, and the reasons for, their struggles in these first few weeks of legal writing. In this Article, we first describe the methodology of our study, including general data about the study participants and report the results. We then explore each of our major conclusions in more detail. Finally, we suggest some modest steps to help our students take charge of their own legal writing success—that is, to recognize and embrace their role as novices in the legal writing discourse community and to actively move themselves forward in their learning.