Call for Proposals, 2018 Western Regional Legal Writing Conference

The Lawyering Skills program at University of California, Irvine School of Law looks forward to hosting the Western Regional Legal Writing Conference on September 28th and 29th, 2018 in sunny Southern California. The theme of this year’s conference is Preparing Students for Modern Law Practice. We are interested in presentations on innovations that you have developed (or are thinking about developing) to prepare students for the realities of current practice.

We are soliciting proposals on related topics (examples are listed at the bottom of this form) as well as other ideas on how we should be preparing students for modern law practice. We strongly encourage proposals that are interactive in format, and will likely require that a portion of each presentation be reserved for questions from and dialogue with the audience. We invite both individual and panel proposals.

The deadline for proposals is Friday, June 1, 2018. To submit, please fill out the form below and upload a Word document with the following information:

Name(s) and contact information of presenter(s)
Title of presentation
Brief description of your presentation
Brief description of the format of your presentation and how you plan to engage the audience
Time needed (25 minutes or 50 minutes)

Please contact Trilby Robinson-Dorn, Associate Dean for Lawyering Skills, at trobinsondorn@law.uci.edu, or Marisela Galindo, Lawyering Skills Program Manager, at mgalindo@law.uci.edu, with any questions.

First Name *:

Last Name *:

Organization *:

Title *:

Email *:

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Topics may include:
How to prepare students

to exercise professionalism and good judgment
to advance diversity and inclusion in practice
for specific practice settings, such as public interest law, in-house practice, law firm practice, and government practice
to use modern legal research tools and skills, including cost-effective research strategies
to communicate effectively in writing in formats beyond memos and briefs, such as analytical e-mails, discovery documents, pleadings, and other types of client deliverables
to communicate effectively orally in the practice settings most common to junior attorneys, including client interviews, office conferences, meetings with clients, and telephone calls
to be creative problem solvers; and
with basic business and practice management skills and knowledge

How we as educators can

best sequence skills (and clinical) instruction to prepare students for practice, including which skills to teach in the first year
learn from and work with practitioners to modernize the skills/writing curriculum; and
best assess what we are doing well and what we are not doing well, which curricular changes are most needed, and how to achieve them, in order to prepare students for modern practice.