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Thank you for your interest in becoming a Senior Writing Fellow. According to those who have been SWFs, the experience affords you the opportunity to develop your own abilities in analysis, writing, and research. You also move closer to becoming an expert on working with writers, something that should serve you throughout your career. To get a better idea of what being a SWF entails, you may want to chat with a current SWF. This memo explains some aspects of the Writing Center experience.
As a Senior Writing Fellow, you attend a year-long class, Applied Legal Composition. You may enroll for either four credits or two credits. If you who enroll for four credits, you write, among other things, a paper analyzing a legal writing subject. If you enroll for two credits, you attend the class and collaborate on some short projects. All SWFs hold two to three forty-five minute conferences each week at the Writing Center. In the class, you study legal writing from both the writer's and the reader's perspectives. You review documents, analyze scholarship, write criticisms of legal writing, prepare your own texts, and read about the theory of legal composition.
As a Senior Writing Fellow, you assist J.D. and graduate students on writing projects. You also provide feedback on such subjects as the following:
- making the transition from another field of expertise, such as engineering or history, to law,
- approaching scholarly writing as a specific type of writing with defined scope, purpose, audience, substance, and technical concerns,
- using legal substance to organize writing effectively and to make argumentative decisions,
- understanding legal writing as a specific process performed under time pressure in practical and academic legal settings,
- using computer technology and word processing to improve legal research and writing,
- connecting substance to syntax,
- becoming more confident on questions of grammar, and
- overcoming writer's block.
We discover new avenues to explore each year. Each group of Senior Writing Fellows forges new approaches to working with students. Those students come from every level, from first year to LL.M. students. Some are native speakers of English, and others speak English as a second, third, or fourth language. Some want help with basic analytical concepts; others want to know how to make an excellent seminar paper publishable.
- You must have at least a 3.0 grade point average at the beginning of the academic year of your appointment. You need not have received an "A" in Legal Research and Writing or Legal Practice to become a Senior Writing Fellow. You need not have been a law fellow to become a Senior Writing Fellow.
Make sure your application includes the following materials:
- Senior Writing Law Fellow Application cover sheet
- An Official law school transcript (ask the Registrar's Office to forward a copy to us at no cost to you).
- Current résumé. If you know your summer plans now, please note them on your résumé.
- Writing Sample. A seminar paper, unedited journal note, or sample from practice is fine. Please submit something you have written alone, preferably something more recently written than your first-year papers.
- Personal Statement.
Please attach a statement explaining why you would like to be a Senior Writing Law Fellow. Why are you drawn to this kind of teaching through conferences? You might say what experience you would bring to being a SWF, what new ideas you would bring to the Writing Center, or what being a Law Fellow has taught you about the teaching of writing as it would apply to the Writing Center. Please limit yourself to two typed, double-spaced pages. Include any other experience in working, teaching, doing legal research and writing, and working one-on-one with writers. If you have particular ESL or linguistics experience, please note such experience in your statement.
- References. A reference from your LRW professor is most helpful.
All applications are due at noon on Friday, April 11th in Room 540.
Interviews will probably be held April 14th – 16th. You will meet in small groups with Frances DeLaurentis. Sign up for an interview in the Writing Center book outside of Room 540.
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