The WRD department offers many examples of classes that, when taken at the same time, compliment one another. One example could be WRD 261: Digital Culture paired with WRD 266: The Social Rhetoric of Video Games, both offered this winter. Another such example concerns students curious about the role of writing in the law. We checked in with Professors Andrea Yelin and Jason Schneider and got previews for their Winter Quarter courses, WRD 321: Legal Writing and WRD 309: Writing About Rights. We asked the teachers what students could expect from the courses and how they approached designing them.
What is the “first thing to know” about legal writing?
Professor Yelin, bringing over a decade of experience to teaching legal writing in the law school environment, explained that legal writing uses rhetorical techniques to determine a particular format for the piece. In explaining the considerations of legal writing, she listed purpose, audience, and tone of writing as “essential”. These considerations mirror the emphasis of many other WRD courses.
This emphasis is considered further in Dr. Schneider’s class, WRD 309. Dr. Schnieder says students will find themselves considering “rights talk”, or the discourse surrounding rights, “by thinking about rights from a language and discourse perspective… and starting to unpack how they do their persuasive work.” When the purpose of writing and, specifically, claims are considered in this course , Dr. Schneider admits that students may find it challenging to adapt to analysis approaches requiring that they ”listen to an argument on its own terms, to understand how those arguments may be persuasive for certain audiences, even if they aren’t persuasive for us.” Dr. Schneider hopes a class can work together on this. He he wants to show you that, rhetorically, these works just appeal to different audiences in similar way.
What approaches lend themselves most to the course design?
“The online, asynchronous format enables students to immerse themselves in the material and to work with their small group,” said Prof. Yelin. She explains that she spends time on establishing “building block” knowledge — a registrar of legal analysis concepts that lend themselves to successful legal writing. The perspective offered in Prof. Yelin’s class models closely that of a legal professional who may very well be faced with issues in “rights talk”, as named by Dr. Schneider.
What is your goal for the course this year?
Of WRD 321, Prof. Yelin says her goals include “expose[ing] students to the genre of legal writing with the documents that attorneys craft”. She also hopes to emphasize “the language that attorneys use in the courts”, and plans to demonstrate this language using texts, movies, and real world examples.
Regarding WRD 309, Dr. Schnieder expresses his call to “help students develop new frameworks for thinking about some of the public arguments and discourses that they hear every day.” This is something that demonstrates his course’s relevance to everyone feeling curious about rhetoric or discourse prevalent in our current cultural moment, not just pre-Law students!
Where Prof. Yelin’s course serves as the applied practice of legal writing, Dr.Schnieder’s class introduces new ways of thinking about and analyzing these writings. Both objective and persuasive writing will be focused on in Prof. Yelin’s class, and she mentioned that courtroom demeanor and persuasive language will be examined as students watch films and listen to Supreme Court oral arguments.
These two courses are offered Winter 2020 as undergraduate major and minor elective courses. If these classes’ approach to Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse makes you curious, add them and others to your course cart before registration!
For more, please download WRD’s Winter 2021 Course Descriptions.