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Off and Running: A Practical Guide to Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing

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Authors
  • Angela C. Arey
  • Nancy A. Wanderer
Series / Aspen Coursebook Series
BOOKMARK
Book length
276 pages
Publication Date
2014-12-09
Edition
Teaching Materials
NO
Description
Off and Running is a unique text for the first semester of the 1L legal writing and research course, designed to guide students through their development of the essential skills needed to practice law. Using a single, classroom-tested fact pattern, the authors demonstrate in concrete steps how a first-year associate might approach a legal problem. Students practice these steps and skills on other fact patterns, as they read about this fictional associate.

Using this fresh approach and a plain-English writing style, the authors introduce essential concepts and skills related to objective legal writing and legal research, with a particular emphasis on the professional and ethical representation of clients. Students learn how to think like a lawyer.

Features:

  • Fully integrated coursebook for first semester of 1L LRW course. Integrates research, analysis, and writing.
  • Emphasis on how skills relate to the practice of law, with focus on both litigation and transactional applications.
  • Professionalism and ethics discussions, including and#34;ethics alertand#34; boxes, are integrated throughout the text.
  • Presents one classroom-tested fact pattern to demonstrate how to i.d. the issues in the fact pattern, use legal resources to research those issues, and use the research results to write documents such as an objective memorandum and a client letter.
  • Professors may assign different fact patterns, set in other jurisdictions, to have students demonstrate their skills. They may also assign a closed-universe problem during the early weeks of the semester.
  • Other chapters cover an overview of the U.S. legal system, the basics of grammar, punctuation and style; how to use e-mail effectively; and incorporating LW principles into litigation and transactional documents.
  • Book takes a streamlined approach, focusing on the essentials and using plain English, in order to remain accessible to students

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About the authors
Angela Arey
Legal Writing Professor
University of Maine School of Law

Angela Arey, a 2005 summa cum laude graduate of the University of Maine School of Law, has returned to her alma mater as an instructor in Legal Writing. A native Mainer, Professor Arey was Editor-In-Chief of the Ocean and Coastal Law Journal and co-chair of the Environmental Law Society at Maine Law. She served as a law clerk for the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and worked in private practice before returning to Maine Law as a faculty member. Professor Arey has her own consulting business, providing legal research and writing services to local attorneys. Along with Maine Law Professor Nancy Wanderer, she is writing a textbook on Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing. Professor Arey has three young children, and she enjoys cooking, kayaking, biking, skiing, and swimming in the ocean.

Nancy Wanderer
Legal Writing Professor; Director, Legal Research and Writing Program
University of Maine Law School

Nancy Wanderer is director of the first-year Legal Research and Writing Program at the Law School. She is known for her enthusiasm in working with students and her love of the law, particularly as it relates to women's and minority rights. A former law clerk to Hon. Daniel E. Wathen, past Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, Professor Wanderer has frequently made presentations and led workshops on legal writing and analysis for lawyers, law clerks, judges, and organizations around Maine and nationwide.

Professor Wanderer had an earlier career in education, with a focus on counseling and language arts. She first taught writing as a professor at Unity College in Unity, Maine. She became interested in the law while working as associate director for career counseling at Colby College. As drafter of the college's sexual harassment policy, Professor Wanderer was asked to be an advocate for an instructor involved in a sexual harassment case. Deciding that she needed the right credentials, Professor Wanderer enrolled at the University of Maine School of Law, where she earned a JD in 1990.

Following her clerkship for Justice Wathen, Professor Wanderer worked at the largest law firm in Portland, Maine, representing clients in employment discrimination matters. She also served as an attorney for the executive director of the Maine Health Care Finance Commission. In 2000, Secretary of Defense William Cohen appointed her to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. She served on Maine's Commission on Gender, Justice, and the Courts, as President of the Maine Women's Fund, and as Chair of the Maine State Bar Association's Committee on the Status of Women Attorneys. Professor Wanderer has also led sessions on opinion-writing for probate judges, both locally and nationally, and has been working with the National Center for State Courts since 2006 to develop and present webinars on Writing Opinions and Orders in Controversial Cases for trial and appellate judges from all around the country.
Product Information
Publication date
2014-12-09
Copyright Year
2014
Pages
276
Digital Product
9781454846796
Subject
Legal Writing
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