Legal research and writing often manifests itself in the form of written documents. Some of these documents are for the internal use of the firm or other entity. Others, such as letters, pleadings, and briefs are for courts and other third parties. A principal document that is often used internally, and, at times, transformed into a letter, brief, or otherwise altered for use with third parties, is the Memorandum of Law. You will draft one of these documents for a large portion of your grade in this class. It will allow you to practice virtually all of the skills that you will learn throughout this course. The Memorandum of Law is covered in chapter 13 of the text. You should probably read that chapter …show more content…
The text should be double-spaced, with page numbers at the bottom of each page and one-inch margins.
Case Briefs Conduct research on the hypothetical fact pattern given to you by your instructor. Locate the relevant cases that you will be addressing in your Memorandum of Law (remember, the Memorandum of Law is an objective assignment, so you should include both cases that help and hurt your position). Read and analyze the cases as discussed in chapter 3 of the text.
After reading and analyzing the cases that you found, prepare case briefs for what you believe to be the five most important cases that you will rely upon in drafting your Memorandum of Law. You should generally format the case briefs the same way that you will format the Memorandum of Law (see above, chapter 13 as to the Memorandum of Law, and chapter 4 of the text as to briefing cases and the form of the briefs). You may include all of the briefs in one Word file. Head the file as you will the Memorandum of Law, and then include each of the five briefs as the text of the file that you will submit through a link provided in Blackboard.
Your Case Briefs are due by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Monday of Module/Week …show more content…
For this part, you will complete a rough draft of the actual Memorandum of Law. Formatting, research, writing, etc. should be as close as possible to what you envision for the final draft. The better the job you do here, the better grade you will receive on this part of the assignment. But, perhaps even more importantly, the better the job you do, the more valuable the feedback you receive. Thus, it will benefit you for the final part of the assignment as