Legal Writing Academy Upper Year Seminars

[Can Satisfy the Major Paper Requirement]

The Dean’s Research and Writing Fellows Program is a unique and challenging opportunity open to top achieving upper-year students with strong writing skills and demonstrated leadership abilities. Successful applicants must have excellent research and communication skills and superior academic achievement. Dean’s Fellows work with a lawyer-mentor on an advanced and realistic research problem, and receive intensive writing instruction from program director, Professor Melanie Mallet.  Dean’s Fellows learn new, more efficient research skills and produce high quality written work that showcases their writing skills. Fellows will lead small tutorial sessions of the first-year course, Principles of Legal Research, CML 1101. If you have questions, please contact Professor Melanie Mallet (mmallet@uottawa.ca). For application details go to the forms repository.

June 1 – August 20 Session: Counts as a Fall 2021 or Winter 2022 course. Apply by April 30, 2021 @ 3 pm

Imagine A Self-Paced Summer Legal Writing Course Designed to

• Fit Your Summer Job Workload
• Prepare You for Any Legal Job

No more than twenty students will work at their own pace to write and edit a legal memo guided by digital resources and online interim assignments that take approximately five hours a week to complete. You’ll have continuous support by dedicated Legal Writing Academy Writing Leader teaching assistants. The Professor will lead you through an editing workshop and meet with you individually to give you feedback before you edit and submit your final memo.

The course emphasises applying feedback and reflection to continuously improve your work. Fifty-percent of the grade is based on successfully completing pass-fail modules, thirty-five percent is your final polished memo, and fifteen percent is a final writing reflection Students will not attend class except for:

• Week seven milestone check-in with the teaching assistant
• Week nine online editing workshop and
• Final memo draft review with the professor in week ten.

For details on how to apply on go to the forms repository.

May 3 – May 21 Session:  counts as a Fall 2021 course.  Apply by April 6, 2021 @ 3 pm.

Fall Term 2021 and January Term 2022 sections.  Apply by June 4, 2021 @ 3 pm.

Are You a Good Candidate to be a Legal Writing Academy Leader?
Want to Sharpen Your Legal Writing Skills and Learn To Self-Edit?
Need a Writing Sample for Your Ideal Legal Job?

Legal Writing Academy Portfolio and Leadership is a three-credit course for 10-12 upper-year students with excellent writing and interpersonal skills. The course is given in English only.

Students will produce high-quality pieces of legal writing to showcase to future employers. Students who demonstrate outstanding writing and interpersonal skills will be eligible to become paid Legal Writing Academy Peer Mentors during the academic year. Contact Professor McRae (Virginia.McRae@uottawa.ca) for more information.

For details on how to apply on go to the forms repository.

Fall Term  (No Application Required)

Learn to use your legal knowledge and writing skills to promote social justice. You pick a social justice writing project of practical use to the community, a non-governmental organization, a charity, a government entity, or a vulnerable group. You polish your legal research and writing skills through in-class exercises, legal memos, and a persuasive document. Class work will expose you to social justice issues of the day and examples of social justice writing. Your final assignment is a legal writing project aimed at a social justice goal. You can show your work to organizations that you might wish to work with in the future.

Writing to promote social justice issues covers a broad spectrum of legal writing with the overall goals of

• promoting legal policy and legislative change to reduce discrimination against historically disadvantaged groups and to ameliorate current conditions of their disadvantage
• assisting persons with claims to gain access to current programs or the legal system more generally
• promoting substantive equality and access to justice

You choose the document for your final project. Here are some examples of legal writing other students have done:

• A brochure for social assistant recipients on their appeal rights
• An Op-Ed on legal issues in refugee policy
• A speech promoting an increase in veterans’ benefits
• A guide for individuals or groups that want to sponsor a refugee under current legislation
• A policy brief on the taxation of disability benefits
• An article in a popular magazine on human trafficking and the needed legal system responses

Fall and Winter Term (No application required)
Eight Seminar Sections

You will hone your writing skills through exercises, writing assignments, and drafting legal documents. The limited enrolment small group format is designed for intensive feedback.  Your writing skills will soar!