Critical Thinking and Legal Discourse [microform] / Kristin R. Woolever
- Bib ID:
- 5477262
- Format:
- Book and Microform
- Author:
- Woolever, Kristin R
- Online Version:
- https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED280083
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- Description:
-
- [Washington, D.C.] : Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse, 1987
- 11 p.
- Summary:
-
Although law professors often say that first year law students need training to "think like lawyers," many law students survive law school by practicing the "skill" of rote memory. It is when they take the bar examination or actually begin to work in a law office that they need the faculty of analytical thinking, for notes must be organized into a cogent argument. Most attorneys need special facility with four cognitive processes: applying law to facts, analogizing cases, drawing inferences, and focusing abstract concepts. The ideal place to teach these critical thinking skills is in legal writing classes, where written discourse offers the best opportunity for correcting deficiencies and refining skills in using critical cognitive processes. Strategies for teaching critical thinking in legal writing seminars include the following: (1) attach the writing class to a substantive law course, (2) focus primarily on organization at a variety of levels, (3) encourage the students to make their organization visible, (4) pay more attention to the effect of the prose on the reader than to the writing process, and (5) insist on multiple revisions. Legal writing combines some elements of freshman composition, literary criticism, and technical writing but depends strongly on reasoning abilities that law students have had little opportunity to develop. (NKA)
- Notes:
-
- ERIC Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (38th, Atlanta, GA, March 19-21, 1987).
- May also be available online. Address as at 14/8/18: https://eric.ed.gov/
- Reproduction:
- Microfiche. [Washington D.C.]: ERIC Clearinghouse microfiches : positive.
- Subject:
- Available From:
- ERIC
- Copyright:
-
In Copyright
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Copyright status was determined using the following information:
- Material type:
- Literary Dramatic Musical
- Published status:
- Published
- Publication date:
- 1987
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