The take-home examination is here. The examination is to be done individually. No collaboration. Please submit it by 5 pm on October 11, 2019 to either of dstratas@yahoo.com or david.stratas@queensu.ca. The class prize, worth roughly $3000, goes to the best submission!
Course description and syllabus
General description of the course:
This is a one credit intensive course in
legal writing and written advocacy, open to approximately 120 second and third
year law students. It is formally known as Law 633.
Class policies:
There will be some classes where the students
will work briefly on writing exercises. There will be others where the classes
will be in lecture format, but with strong interaction with the students. High
quality participation is encouraged.
Please note that in order to pass this
course, you must attend every class, for the whole class. Attendance will be
taken and absences will be detected. Any absences must be explained with strong
reasons offered. If you plan to be away for any of the classes, or if you need
to leave early in any of them, do not enter this course.
Course evaluation: students will receive a
"pass/fail" grade based on a take-home examination (see below).
Precedents and materials will be available online
and will be discussed in class. In order to participate, students must bring a
laptop computer to class in order to access the materials wirelessly.
The instructor:
Justice David Stratas (Federal Court of
Appeal) (bio).
On September 7, 2019, we will have a guest
instructor, Queen's grad Robert Thomson (Queen's Law '13), a well-known, provincial Crown
Attorney in Ottawa. Rob will assist on an exercise concerning the Cornell case
that will be done in class on September 7, 2019. From the perspective of a relatively recent graduate and a junior/intermediate level practitioner, he will also discuss practical ways of conveying masses of complicated information to busy courts.
Schedule and Syllabus (subject to change):
September
6, 2019 -- 13:00 to 16:30 (at the latest) in Jeffery 128
● Basic writing instruction: towards
clarity, brevity and directness
● At the end
of class on September 6, 2019, a mandatory editing exercise will be assigned. On the
Exercises webpage, it is Exercise D. Edit any two of the three paragraphs in
that exercise. Apply the tips supplied during the writing class.
● Submit your answers to Exercise D to
David Stratas by email by September 11 at 17:00. On September 13, the
assignment will be taken up during a writing workshop.
September
7, 2019 -- 10:00 to 16:30 in Macdonald Hall 001
● Factum writing: The overview, the fact section, the law section; strategy and tactics. Before this class, students should read and be familiar with the Cornell exercise.
September
13, 2019 -- 13:00 to 15:30 in Jeffery 128
● Writing
workshop
September 27,
2019 -- 09:00
● A take-home
examination shall be made available at the top of this webpage. It must be
submitted by email to David Stratas no later than October 8, 2019 at 18:00 EDT.
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