Skills & Values: Lawyering Process

This legal writing text is unlike others in that it is a hybrid text, with a smaller portion in print and the rest available to professors as supplemetary materials. This offers several advantages over other books. First, it is somewhat less expensive than a traditional text, and with the significant burden of textbook costs on our students, this is an advantage they appreciate. Second, it is based on the belief that students today need to read less and do more, and be active, rather than passive, in their learning.

It is no secret to educators that our students are changing, with shorter attention spans and an increased facility with technology. Rather than fight it, this text seeks to leverage that reality. Third, students who are learning this material for the first time perhaps do not need to read large amounts of information about the writing process. As they are first learning how to do, they need to do, rather than spend a lot of time reading about it.

Finally, this textbook is designed for flexible use because each professor has his or her own way of teaching the course and the larger texts may not be fully in sync with how the professor treats the material. So a central idea behind this textbook is that it enables professors to assign limited amounts of reading and then to use the supporting materials in ways that suit their individual approaches to the course, thus making it flexible and highly customizable by the adopting professor.