I'm hearing through the grapevine that some of my law students were unhappy with the grades that they received on their group papers this semester. I told them to find a movie with legal ethics issues and write about those issues. (Sneaky way to reinforce what they're learning, eh?)
The good news: for the most part, they did good work analyzing the ethics issues in the movies. The bad news: most of them made proofreading and grammatical mistakes.
The statistics: because virtually every group did a good job on the analysis, I curved the grades based on their mistakes in proofreading and grammar.
I'd warned them that no one could get an A on this assignment without good grammar and few proofreading mistakes. Why am I so strict? Because no matter how good their analysis is, if they can't showcase their work with decent writing skills, their employers and their clients won't be impressed.
I don't know where students get the idea that employers and clients (and law professors) don't care about writing skills. It's one of the key skills that lawyers must have. And our writing program at Boyd is not just good--it's superb.
So here's a request for my lawyer (and client) friends out there: please weigh in on this post. Do you care about how your lawyers write? Does it matter to you if they say good things, but say them poorly?
Many thanks.
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