Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1999
Publication Information
74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 925 (1998-1999)
Abstract
After receiving the invitation to address this conference, I found my thoughts often returning to my own education in legal writing. As I recall, my legal writing experience in law school was not a very intensive—or positive—one. As was quite typical in that era (almost thirty-three years ago), the program at my law school was not very extensive: we wrote a memorandum of law and a brief under the guidance of a graduate law student.
My real legal writing education took place in the study of the Chief Justice of the United States. For the better part of five years, I sat across from him at a massive library table as he wrote his opinions. The lessons of those years deeply influenced my own approach to legal writing, to the legal writing that I have required of my students at Notre Dame, and to the legal writing that I expect of my own law clerks as they assist me as I once assisted the Chief Justice.
Recommended Citation
Kenneth F. Ripple,
Legal Writing in the New Millennium: Lessons from a Special Teacher and a "Special Classroom",
74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 925 (1998-1999).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/232
Comments
Reprinted with permission of the Notre Dame Law Review.