The Constant Paper Writing Dilemma

[BlockedQuebecois]

In my view, writing well thought out forum/reddit posts is more useful for legal practice than writing academic papers. 

Those platforms encourage concise pieces of written advocacy or advice, and are often made in the context of conversations with other people who do not share your view (and who are accordingly testing your arguments or position). 

Conversely, the style of academic papers (in the humanities and in law school) is overly long and includes overly detailed analysis that will rarely be required in practice.

I have worked with a lot of students, and one of the hardest things to get them to understand is that writing a paper in response to every question I ask them is not helpful. The analysis I need from them is almost always what you would see on a good law school exam answer (or Reddit post): a summary of the principles and the sources from which they derive, followed by a brief section applying those principles to the facts.

Most law students would benefit from writing fewer papers in school and instead doing something more practically linked to their future careers (clinics, moots, workshops, etc.), or, failing that, black letter law courses. It would limit the amount of reprogramming they need to do in order to be an effective advocate, whilst still providing opportunities to improve their written advocacy skills. 

Edited December 25, 2023 by BlockedQuebecois

[Yogurt Baron]

1 hour ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

In my view, writing well thought out forum/reddit posts is more useful for legal practice than writing academic papers. 

In fairness, the argument that kicked this all off had nothing to do with developing skills for legal practice - it was that writing academic papers is useful because maybe you'll be able to publish them. That, to me, was a bit of a weird non sequitur - publishing papers isn't really of professional interest to anyone but career academics - but as far as it goes, I don't think it's wrong.

[LMP]

I too am in favour of mandating forum posting.