Lawyering Professor Publishes Two Legal Writing Books This Year

Lawyering professor, Sandy Patrick, co-authored two legal writing books this past year. Becoming a Legal Writer: A Workbook with Explanations to Develop Objective Legal Analysis and Writing Skills is an interactive workbook with exercises designed to enhance the development of fundamental lawyering skills. Modern Legal Scholarship: A Guide to Producing and Publishing Scholarly and Professional Writing was published in July 2020 and provides a step-by-step guide through the entire scholarly writing process.

Becoming a Legal Writer is a workbook co-authored with Professor Robin Boyle Laisure of St. John’s University School of Law and Professor Christine Coughlin of Wake Forest School of Law. The workbook is designed to complement any legal writing book or be used as a stand-alone text for academic support or even pre-law instruction. It helps students learn skills such as formulating questions to ask clients upon intake, developing critical reading skills for statutes and cases, briefing cases, extrapolating implicit and explicit rules, synthesizing rules, organizing and applying the law into objective written analysis, and polishing legal writing. This fall, the book is being integrated into an online option in Carolina Academic Press’s Core Knowledge for Lawyers platform.

“We saw a need for more interactive exercises for students to accompany whatever textbook their program uses,” stated Patrick. “By having a series of exercises, students can become more proficient through practice.”

Modern Legal Scholarship was co-authored with Professor Christine Coughlin, attorney Matthew Houston, and attorney Elizabeth McCurry Johnson, a former law librarian and professor. “Whether academic or professional in nature, legal scholarship has moved beyond traditional parameters into genres that enable legal scholars to engage more fully with clients, potential clients, and the public at large,” Patrick said. “This book meets writers where they are and encourages them to find their unique scholarly and professional voice.”

The book guides readers through the full scholarly writing process, from inception of an idea to drafting a broad range of different types of scholarly and professional documents, to submitting and publishing a work. The book provides a comprehensive approach to researching, writing, and publishing a variety of documents relevant to legal practice in today’s modern world, including law journal articles, seminar papers and capstone projects, bar journal articles, policy papers, op-eds, social media posts and blogs, and even creative works. The book also includes helpful examples and clear step-by-step instructions.