Gionfriddo, Jane Kent

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Boston College Law SchoolDigital Commons @ Boston College Law SchoolBoston College Law School Faculty PapersJanuary 2001The President's ColumnJane Kent GionfriddoBoston College Law School, gionfrid@bc.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/lsfpPart of the Legal Education Commons, Legal Profession Commons, and the Legal Writing andResearch CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in BostonCollege Law School Faculty Papers by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. For more information, pleasecontact nick.szydlowski@bc.edu.Recommended CitationJane Kent Gionfriddo. "The President's Column." The Second Draft: Bulletin of the Legal Writing Institute 15, no.1 (2001): 1-3.THE SECOND DRAFT 1This column contains excerpts fromProfessor Gionfriddo’s address at the 2000LWI Conference.As many of you know, a group of legalwriting faculty, representing both LWIand the Association of Legal WritingDirectors, has been engaged in acontinuing effort to improve the ABAaccreditation standards that regulateemployment conditions for legal writ-ing faculty, and in particular to convincethe ABA to include all full-time legalwriting faculty within the protections ofSection 405(c) of the standards, whichrequires job security for clinical faculty.We have kept you up-to-date on thiseffort through postings on the legalwriting and research listservs andthrough discussions at the LWIConference—and we will continue todo so since our work on this project isdefinitely a “work in progress.”Over the past two years more than27 legal writing professors have testi-fied before the Standards ReviewCommittee of the ABA’s Section onLegal Education and Admissions tothe Bar. All these people have madeimpassioned, cogent and compellingarguments. Last February, I was one ofthe group who testified at theCommittee’s hearings in Dallas. Thoseof you who know me well know thatflying on planes is not the thing thatJane Gionfriddo likes the best in theworld. That I felt compelled to fly fromBoston to Dallas to testify illustratesjust how strongly I feel about thisissue.CONTINUED ON PAGE 3Volume 15, No. 1                                                                            January 2001The President’sColumnTHESECOND DRAFTBulletin of the Legal Writing InstituteLEGALWRITINGINSTITUTEJoining the Club Without Paying ItsDues: Newcomers View Their FirstLWI ConferenceBy Tracy Bach, Assistant Professor of Legal Writing, Vermont Law SchoolCONTINUED ON PAGE 4At the opening session of this summer’sLegal Writing Institute Conference atSeattle University, LWI President JaneKent Gionfriddo asked people attendingtheir first conference to stand and berecognized. I and (what seemed like) amajority of those in the auditorium rosefrom our seats. Looking into the sea offaces, I began to wonder: all of usnewcomers had become LWI membersgratis by dint of becoming legal writingteachers, but had we really joined the club?When I left Seattle a few days later, chockfull of teaching tips, the latest in LRWresearch and scholarship, and insights intothe organization, I was curious about whatothers took home from their initial LWImeeting.Like all good professional gatherings,the Seattle conference provided a forumfor putting faces with names. “It was goodto see others as enthusiastic about theirwork as I am about mine,” said MichaelSantana, an Assistant Professor of LegalWriting at Vermont Law School. While notquite the meet and greet frenzy ofSundance or even the annual law schoolorientation picnic, the conference createdopportunities to see in person the peoplewhose books you’ve taught from andlistserv advice you’ve relied on. Not onlydoes it satisfy your curiosity, it brings youthat much more into the fold.Moreover, the substance of the LWIsessions showed the concern for goodteaching and caring collegiality thatexemplifies this organization. It was clearfrom each session that experiencedteachers saw the conference as a chance tomentor those just starting out, to helpnewcomers learn how to teach studentspositively. Numerous sessions focused onpedagogy, from how to create assignmentsand critique student work to drawinglessons from different disciplines to enrichour own teaching. Especially popular wasa workshop on critiquing student papers,coordinated by Daniel Barnett of BostonCollege Law School. Judy Giers, whobecame a legal writing instructor at theUniversity of Oregon last June andattended the conference in July “beforeteaching a day,” benefitted from thehands-on conference sessions and foundthe Basics track very useful. While takinga break from critiquing a stack of 54 first-year memos, she happily acknowledgedthat “I took part of the problem oncovenants not to compete [used in thecritiquing session] and incorporated it intomy curriculum this fall. I already hadsample memos to use as a baseline.”Ben Bratman, Associate Director ofLegal Research and Writing at the StateUniversity of New York at Buffalo Schoolof Law, also found the session materialsand insights remarkably helpful. “I couldtake these tangible ideas back to theclassroom and apply them,” he recentlyTHE SECOND DRAFT 3Below is my testimony. I hope it willhelp you think about what you will say whenyour turn comes to speak, whether at yourown school or at the national level.w w w“My name is Jane Kent Gionfriddo. I’m anAssociate Professor and Director of LegalReasoning, Research & Writing at BostonCollege Law School. I’m also the President-Elect of the Legal Writing Institute, a nationalorganization of legal writing faculty at allABA-accredited law schools in the UnitedStates, faculty members in English depart-ments, members of independent research-and-consulting organizations, and attorneysin practice, all of whom are committed to thedevelopment of excellent legal writing in lawpractice and to the teaching, curriculumdevelopment and scholarship on legalanalysis and legalwriting in all lawschools.I’m here to-day to speak aboutthe positive effectsof 405(c) status forall full-time legalwriting faculty. Iwant to begin by saying that I don’t need tobe here today because I already have the 405(c)support of my institution. I’m here because Iknow first-hand why 405(c) status is crucial tothe development of the discipline to which Ihave committed the last eighteen years of myprofessional life. My five LR&W colleaguesand I have had the support from our facultyas well as a long line of Deans at BostonCollege Law School who have had the visionto recognize that excellence in a legal writingfaculty provides depth and breadth to theentire law school curriculum.In essence, our 405(c) status has given usthe kind of job security that over the years hasallowed us to focus our energy and creativityon developing a sophisticated LR&W curricu-lum. It is this kind of curriculum that answersthe question of ‘why should legal educationcare about developing the status of a group offaculty who teach legal reasoning, research andwriting courses in the first and upper level lawschool curriculum?’For instance, we would all agree that thefirst year of law school is all about teachingstudents how to ‘think like a lawyer.’ Thequestion for legal education is, how best doWe extend our thanks andappreciation to all thecontributors, proofreadersand technical assistants whohelped with this transitionalissue of The Second Draft,especially Mike Horgan,FSU Printing & MailingServices; Erik Knutsen andRalaina Ruvalcaba (FloridaState); and DonnaWilliamson and Lisa Thomas(Oregon).The President’s Column(continued from page 1)we do this? By what combination ofapproaches to teaching legal analysis, by whatpedagogical methodologies do we help thebroadest range of students become excellentin ‘thinking like a lawyer’?Most first-year courses, those focused ina particular subject area, teach legal doctrineand analysis through a systematic study ofcases and other authority in large classes usingthe Socratic Method. This is a time-honoredand proven method to teach first-yearstudents legal analysis. We all understand thisin legal education; less well understood,though, is that a sophisticated LR&W courseteaches legal analysis from a differentperspective, one that greatly complements thetraditional approach.A legal writing course teaches studentsthe process of legal problem-solving—identifying relevant authorities, analyzingthem individually and synthesizing them tofigure out what they say about an area of law,and applying them to a particular client’sproblem in a particular jurisdiction. Workingin this real-life context forces students tograpple with the analytical process in a waydifferent from that within the traditionaldoctrinal classroom.Moreover, legal writing courses arespecifically designed to teach written expres-sion of that analysis. We all know fromwriting legal scholarship or law practicedocuments how writing forces us to confrontwhat we understand and what we do not.Writing brings us face to face with theprecision and clarity of our thinking about aparticular issue—or lack thereof—especiallywhen, as in legal writing classrooms, we aregiven substantial written and oral feedback onwhere we have succeeded and where we havefailed.Both of these approaches—the tradi-tional doctrinal approach and that inLR&W—are fundamental to training stu-dents in the first year of law school. Giving405(c) status to the group of professionalswho provide some of this fundamentaltraining simply recognizes that legal educa-tion wants all law school faculty to have thekind of job security that results in the kind ofhigh level instruction and curriculum devel-opment that benefits our students and thusultimately the legal profession.405(c) status is simply something whose‘time has come.’ It is not somethingdangerous; rather, it is something positivethat will encourage, in fact take advantage of,the contribution of a group of talented,creative, committed people, which can onlyenhance the curriculum of individual lawschools and legal education in general.”[Ed. note: a report that ALWD and LWI sent tothe Standards Review Committee and the Council ofthe Section on Legal Education and Admission tothe Bar is available on the ALWD website atwww.alwd.org .  The changes proposed in theALWD/LWI report were not adopted, and thecurrent proposals are more modest than theALWD/LWI proposals. The text of the currentproposals, which would affect Standards 302 and405(d) rather than bringing legal writing teacherswithin the ambit of 405(c), is available atwww.abanet .org/lega led/standards/proposed.html. A hearing on the proposedchanges was scheduledto take place at theAALS meeting inSan Francisco in Janu-ary; additional hear-ings will take place atthe ABA Mid-YearMeeting in San Diego,CA, on Friday, Febru-ary 16, and at the American Law Institute AnnualMeeting in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, May16. Comments on the current proposals should beaddressed to Dean Barry Currier, DeputyConsultant, at currierb@staff.abanet.org. TheCouncil anticipates making a final recommendationregarding these standards by June 2001.]My five LR&W colleagues and I have had the support from our faculty as wellas a long line of Deans at Boston College Law School who have had the visionto recognize that excellence in a legal writing faculty provides depth and breadthto the entire law school curriculum.

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