In this podcast, Prof. Jennifer Martin discusses the top ten mistakes law students make in law school examinations. These are poor issue spotting, poor knowledge and understanding of the law, poor application of the law to the facts, giving only conclusory answers, lack of organization, errors in the facts, failure to understand the role you are given in the examination, padding, fact inventing, and question begging.
A large percentage of litigation arising out of contracts results from poor drafting. In order to eliminate this litigation, it is imperative that students and legal professionals master good drafting skills. One of the most important aspects of drafting a contract is the operative language--language that affects legal relationships. This lesson is designed to introduce law students to operative language commonly used in drafting contracts, in particular, language of obligation (shall), language of authorization (may) and language of condition precedent (must).
Drafters of contracts, wills and statutes are plagued with the ambiguities inherent in the use of these two connectors. This lesson is designed to identify these ambiguities and then help students to draft with conjunctions which eliminate those ambiguities.
This exercise reviews some substantive principles of contract law and demonstrates the application of that substance to the process of drafting. The exercise begins with a form contract that the user must rewrite to suit the needs of the client. On completion, the user has reviewed applicable principles from both the common law and the U.C.C. In addition, the user has learned principles of drafting that can be applied either to revision of a form or to drafting from scratch.
Preemption checking determines if an idea for a journal note or paper is original. This lesson identifies the sources to use and the process of conducting a preemption check.
This exercise is to help users learn the rules of proper citation form for briefs and legal memoranda. It does not deal with proper citation form for law review footnotes. It is divided into three sections: Section A deals with cases, B with statutory materials and C with secondary authorities.
This lesson will help you master legal citations using the California Style Manual, Fourth Edition (hereinafter "Manual").
This lesson teaches proper use of citation in Florida legal documents and court memoranda. You'll want to have a Bluebook handy while doing this lesson.
This lesson teaches Ohio citation as governed by the Supreme Court of Ohio's recently published guide, Writing Manual: A Guide to Citations, Style and Judicial Opinion Writing (the "Writing Manual"). This lesson covers only the material contained in part I of the Writing Manual, which the lesson will refer to as the Citation Manual.
This lesson will explain what constitutes plagiarism, distinguish between copyright and plagiarism, and offer opportunities for students to test their understanding of plagiarism.