The Faculty of Law is delighted to welcome Dr. James C. Raymond, President of The International Institute for Legal Writing + Reasoning, to the Law Centre. Dr. Raymond is the author of numerous books, including Writing for the Court, a manual for judges and lawyers that provides guidance and structural templates for preparing effective and succinct briefs, clear written advocacy and written judgments.
Dr. Raymond has lectured on legal writing around the world-from Australia to Zimbabwe. According to his website, "His seminars and workshops are not just about editing legal documents after they are written. He has developed a fundamentally new approach to identifying, arranging, contextualizing, and analyzing issues.
"As a result, judges and lawyers produce better judgments and pleadings in less time-eliminating jargon, irrelevant details, poor organization, fuzzy reasoning, costly mistakes, and strategic errors that result in appealable error or justice denied.
"Most legal writing courses are about tidying up legal documents after they are written. Dr. Raymond's seminars involve writing documents from scratch, using a precise set of techniques for organizing complex material, for analyzing issues, and for arguing persuasively.
"His lectures combine a scholarly knowledge of rhetoric and linguistics with more than twenty-five years of practical experience working with judges and lawyers in more than seventeen countries. They examine traditions that make it difficult not only for lay readers, but even for lawyers to understand legal documents. They replace these practices with a fundamentally new approach that has been described as 'radical common sense'."
During his time at the Faculty of Law, Dr. Raymond will run two workshops on the topic of legal writing and reasoning for first-year law students and one seminar for faculty on helping law students learn how to write.
Dr. Raymond's visit to the University of Alberta is made possible through funding by the TLEF Teachers' Roundtable Grant.
Dr. James C. Raymond