John Passmore, Author at Law School Toolbox®

How To Polish Your Legal Writing

June 16, 2017 By John Passmore Leave a Comment

Of course, there will be the occasional legal writing assignment that you finish minutes before the deadline in a cold sweet. Amid the ever present time crunch of law school, being realistic about the time a legal writing assignment will take can be tough. But this post is about the good days, when you are on top of things and you have your legal writing assignment drafted with time to spare. What can you do to really polish your legal writing in the final hours?

The substantive law of a writing assignment can be grueling, but legal writing demands careful editing. Because of the subject-matter complexity and the multitude of technical elements, getting it all right can be daunting. The key to legal editing is to take multiple passes through your writing, focusing on a something different each time. Don’t try to review and edit all of the aspects of your assignment in one pass. Your law review or journal will have the legal editing process down to a fine art. For starters, follow these legal editing basics: [Read more…] about How To Polish Your Legal Writing

The Art of the Case Name (and 8 You Should Know)

June 14, 2017 By John Passmore Leave a Comment

They say a picture can be worth a thousand words. But in legal writing a case name can be worth a thousand words – probably more for some cases. Case names are often used as shorthand for their holdings, but some cases establish such fundamental concepts they become the root of a term of art. Case name terms of art trigger a well-informed reader to call to mind a complicated legal concept and pair that with a particular application, such as an objection or a test. Usually using the first party name listed in the style of the case, these constructs become usefully packed with meaning.

This is a very handy communication tool for the legal profession and can simplify legal writing, but for the law student preparing for class or researching, case-name terms of art can be far from helpful. Nothing will grind that rushed, pre-class reading to a halt faster than an embedded reference to a case (not even assigned) that lays the foundation for understanding the assigned case. [Read more…] about The Art of the Case Name (and 8 You Should Know)

6 Easy Tips For Reading Cases More Effectively in Law School

May 19, 2017 By John Passmore 1 Comment

Preparing for law school classes generally means reading cases. While avoiding a public shaming compliments of the Socratic Method is a great motivator, keeping up with your reading is truly worth the time and effort. Amongst the busyness of law school, reading assigned cases uniquely forces you to digest course material as it comes. But preparing effectively and efficiently is key to your law school success and your sanity.

Whatever your case reading and briefing strategy, here are 6 quick and easy tips that will improve your comprehension and make your reading more effective: [Read more…] about 6 Easy Tips For Reading Cases More Effectively in Law School

15 Latin Legal Terms Every 1L Should Know

March 22, 2017 By John Passmore 9 Comments

Along with mastering complicated legal concepts, enduring the Socratic Method, learning to outline, and tackling legal writing, law school forces you to learn an entirely new vocabulary. Learning the language of the law is a real hurdle that cannot be overlooked just because it is not covered on the syllabus. To add a degree of difficulty, some of the terms you come across while reading your cases are not even in English. Smart law students are generally experts at context clues, so the usage of many of these terms may already be familiar to you even if you have never looked up the translation. But there is plenty in law school to learn by osmosis – don’t struggle with these Latin terms if a simple translation could remove a stumbling block! This post will give you 15 Latin legal terms frequently encountered, but rarely translated or discussed. Without further ado – [Read more…] about 15 Latin Legal Terms Every 1L Should Know

“Good Law” vs “Bad Law” Explained

March 15, 2017 By John Passmore 1 Comment

There are plenty of landmines in law school legal writing, but whether you are citing “good law” is a fundamental step of legal analysis that will be crucial to your success in law school and beyond. Early in your law school career, you will inevitably hear the terms “good law” and “bad law” bandied about without much definition. I remember being told as a 1L that tools like LexisNexis’s Shepard’s (or similar tools that gather subsequent appellate history and citing decisions) would tell you if your case law was good or bad. So, I would dutifully pull a Shepard’s report, but disoriented by the cryptic symbols, I would simply flee any line of cases when a red stop sign appeared and maybe take my chances when a yellow triangle appeared. There is no reason to be intimidated by checking case law validity. This post won’t cover every possible scenario, but hopefully it will provide a strategy for thinking through your good law/bad law analysis and make that Shepard’s report just a little less daunting. [Read more…] about “Good Law” vs “Bad Law” Explained

John Passmore

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