Ruth Anne Robbins with Victoria Siegel '20
1Ls meet on-on-one with faculty for writing conferences that are audio recorded for students to review while drafting revisions.

Our clinical professors who teach the Legal Analysis, Writing & Research and related courses are leaders and innovators in the field of legal writing. U.S. News & World Report regularly ranks Rutgers Legal Writing as a top-20 program, as voted by other professors at other law schools. Our Lawyering Programs have developed a holistic “Orientation to Graduation” approach to preparing students for the representation of clients. As part of that, professors teaching our legal writing courses work with other faculty to integrate major goals of the first year legal writing courses with those of the school's upper division courses, clinics, internal competitive appellate advocacy program, other skills courses, and the various pro bono programs. A student might easily see their legal writing professor again in a clinical or skill course or in a pro bono project.  

The first-year legal writing courses focus on investigatory legal and factual research and intra-office or client-counseling communications in the fall, and persuasive writing and oral advocacy on behalf of the client in the spring. In both semesters, students write multiple drafts of assignments and have one-on-one meetings with professors before submitting revised drafts. Classes have a student-teacher ratio of approximately 18 to 1. Teaching Fellows are an integral part of the writing program and earn credit for their work. The upper-level curriculum is designed to enhance the depth of student knowledge in writing and public speaking. Those courses expose students to sophisticated techniques of persuasion, drawing on interdisciplinary materials and from scholarship in the field. At least one upper-level course is offered each summer.

Our clinical professors teaching courses in the legal writing program are dedicated to both teaching and scholarship. They present at international, national, and cross-discipline conferences and are leaders of national legal writing organizations. They also serve as editors of peer-reviewed journals. Many of the legal writing faculty have received competitive grants for their teaching and scholarship. And several faculty members have been selected to attend scholarly writing workshops and to be facilitators at those workshops. They regularly conduct continuing legal education seminars and publish scholarship on the practice and teaching of law.

For more information about the Legal Analysis, Writing & Research, please contact any of the professors listed below. 

Barbara Gotthelf Sarah E. Ricks Ruth Anne Robbins
Pam Jenoff Carol L. Wallinger  

and our adjunct professor Linda Shashoua and Brendan Fee.

Writing Resources:

The Writing Center

Other Links:

Link to information about plagiarism (we aren't trying to set a tone but just be helpful)
Hieros Gamos Legal Directories