First Legal Writing Assignment
It was only 30% of my grade.
Yesterday I handed in the final draft of my first legal writing memo. It was an analysis of a limited amount of Illinois case law surrounding intentional infliction of emotional distress, and an application of this analysis to a given scenario.
Over the last few days I got into the habit of asking fellow students, “How’s your emotional distress?” Of course, I was leaving open whether I was asking about their memos or their emotional distress over their memos.
It wasn’t bad. I had my draft in good shape the weekend before last, and put in a few minor edits this past weekend. I know that I’m not a good last minute writer. My typing is terrible and I can’t proof my own work very well within 24-48 hours of writing anything. So I plan to get writing assignments substantially complete a week ahead of time.
Of course, by getting ahead in one class, this means that I didn’t do something else. Last week was the first week I didn’t get a chance to fully prepare for class. I had just run out of time and couldn’t read a couple of cases for Torts. Not a disaster, but a let down as I’d been on top of things until now.
For the rest of the month my focus will be on my next writing assignment, which requires us to do our own statutory and case law research, then write a memo based on it. And I need to get serious about my outlining…