The Legal Writing Manual Self-regulated Learning for First-year Law Students

Abstract

In an effort to teach law students to “think like a lawyer” and develop their professional identities, attention has turned to helping students self-regulate their learning. To encourage self-regulated learning among her first-year law students, one of us (Tanner) adapted a self-regulated learning prompt developed by the other (Roderick) to assign The Legal Writing Manual—a capstone project in her first-year legal writing course, which tasks students with instructing others in processes and practices for composing legal memoranda and appellate briefs. Each student’s manual is built upon previous analytical and self-reflective work carried out in a first-year legal writing course. The experience of articulating instructions for legal writing encourages students to self-regulate their learning by re-thinking knowledge and practices for legal writing.