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Course

Academic Writing for Lawyers

Ended Dec 31, 2020

Full course description

Module Topics Include

  • Identifying Your Project, Assessing Your Problem
  • Finding the Topic of Your Writing Project
  • Finding Your Supervisor or Advisor for the Writing Project
  • Organizing Information, Ideas, and Arguments with a Mind Map
  • Plagiarism and How to Avoid It
  • Getting Published and Other Uses of the Writing Project

Meet the Instructor

Photo of Frank Emmert

Frank Emmert

John S. Grimes Professor of Law
Executive Director, Center for International and Comparative Law

Contact me here.

Course Introduction

Although the course will only require a couple of hours of your time, it could save you many more hours of work on your current academic writing project. This course will teach you valuable skills that will benefit you for the rest of your life! Just imagine what you will be able to accomplish if you can approach any major writing project with the confidence "I can do this, I am good at this. If I put my mind to it, I will succeed. I will finish on time and with good or even great results!"

The skills you will learn are based in experience. Without formal writing instruction, I struggled for years through many projects, often with mixed or disappointing results. Though it took time, I learned by trial and error and became better. I soon realized that many of my students were struggling in the same ways. I began sharing my experience and giving them tips on how to get better results sooner, without having to endure the trials and errors themselves. For years, I have shared my experience in what developed into one-day workshops, taught to bachelor through doctoral level students, in many countries across the globe, from Armenia to Zimbabwe, and at many top universities and law schools in Europe and America. In each instance, there were participants that came to me afterward to thank me for the valuable advice. They also shared advice or experience that I was able to incorporate, to make the workshop a little better every year. Since I can only be in one place at a time, with the help of some experts in online education, I have turned the workshop into this course. I hope you will join the many who have looked back and said "yes, this was worth it, it really helped me a lot!"

 

Length: 3-5 hours

 

Department: 
IU McKinney School of Law

 

Credit: None

 

Audience: Graduate law students (LLM, SJD, PhD)