“Teaching Legal Analysis: A Tale from the Front” by Chuck Splawn in the Office of Academic Success appears in a recent issue of Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing.
The assistant director of Elon Law’s Office of Academic Success explains his techniques for helping students sharpen their analytical skills in a recent issue of a journal widely read by legal research and writing instructors, law firms, and law school librarians.
“Teaching Legal Analysis: A Tale from the Front” by Chuck Splawn appears in the Fall 2019 issue of Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing. Published twice a year by Thomson Reuters, the electronic journal “provides a forum for discussing the teaching of legal research and writing, focusing on research materials, tools and theories.”
Splawn details four key elements of his Mastering Legal Analysis course at Elon Law:
- Reintroducing students to the classification of information and the examination of inferences;
- Deconstructing the process of legal analysis itself;
- Summarizing the strategy and techniques by which students are challenged to move through a practice-oriented textbook; and
- Assigning students to draft an office memorandum “that serves both as proof of the skills they’ve acquired and a template for the union of thinking and communication that will help them in law school, on the bar exam, and in the practice of law.”
“I wrote this article primarily because of how positively most students respond to the Mastering Legal Analysis course,” Splawn said. “Several things are unique about the course, such that I thought fellow teachers might find my experiences helpful.
“First, I teach the course collaboratively. Students and I journey through problems together in class. Second, I am very transparent in breaking down and demonstrating the components of legal analysis, which can be a somewhat mysterious thought process.”
A graduate of Wake Forest University School of Law, Splawn’s legal career included general private practice, litigation management as in-house counsel for a national insurer, and corporate law involving mergers & acquisitions. He has been teaching since 2001 and joined Elon Law in 2014.