A Promising Amalgamation Law, Poetry, and the Making of Legal Writers

Abstract

First-year law students often struggle with the transition from writing as an undergraduate to writing as a lawyer. Incorporating poetry into the first-year legal writing curriculum may assist students in making that transition. The close, active reading poetry requires is a strong scaffold to the critical reading lawyers must undertake. In addition, poetry aptly models how language can create an emotional impact, which is akin to how effective lawyers use language to tell a compelling story on their client's behalf. This Assignment has students read and analyze Gwendolyn Brooks's poem “Boy Breaking Glass,” and then imagine the protagonist of the poem was being criminally prosecuted for his act of vandalism and write the story of the case from both the defense side and the prosecution side. The Assignment enables students to appreciate how a text (or a set of facts giving rise to a legal dispute) can give rise to varied interpretations, and how language and storytelling techniques can be used persuasively.