Through structured legal writing across multiple genres—from clients to judges to legal peers—students engage actively with the law in a critical context. I challenge them to ask, “What’s really going on?”—to look beyond rules and procedures and critically examine the socio-economic-political forces shaping civil procedure and legal outcomes.

Table of Contents

• Teaching Philosophy
• Teaching Practice
• Impact
• Supplemental Material
  

Teaching Philosophy

Legal education should equip students not only with doctrinal knowledge, but also with critical thinking, communication skills, and ethical awareness needed for thoughtful law practice. My teaching emphasizes the human dimensions of law, preparing students for practice, the bar exam, and graduate-level study. Through structured legal writing across multiple genres—from clients to judges to legal peers—students engage actively with the law in a critical context. I challenge them to ask, “What’s really going on?”—to look beyond rules and procedures and critically examine the socio-economic-political forces shaping civil procedure and legal outcomes. This practical inquiry fosters a values-driven, reflective approach to legal work. Scaffolded assignments and ongoing feedback support the development of analytical agility, writing competence, and professional identity. Ultimately, I view teaching as a collaborative process that prepares students not just to apply legal doctrines, but to contribute meaningfully to a more just and equitable legal system.

Procedure in Practice: The Critical Writing Lab

Teaching Practice

Procedure in Practice: The Critical Writing Lab blends traditional doctrinal instruction with genre-based legal writing, critical inquiry, and reflection to move beyond traditional Socratic lecture formats in both first-year (1L) and advanced civil procedure courses. Its goal is to help students understand procedural rules not only as legal structures, but as frameworks that impact people, shape access to justice, and reinforce or disrupt power dynamics.

The core innovation of this pedagogy is the repeated, intentional use of legal writing—across multiple genres and audiences—as a mode of deep learning and professional identity development. Students are consistently asked to interrogate, “What’s really going on (WRGO)?”, encouraging them to critically assess not only the technical procedural rules and legal doctrines, but also the socio-economic-political forces behind them.

At the heart of this teaching practice is a scaffolded sequence of legal writing assignments aligned with key procedural topics. Each task is situated within a real-world or simulated legal scenario and designed for a specific audience, such as clients, judges, or legal professionals.

In 1L Civil Procedure, assignments include:

• A client advisory email, co-authored in law firm groups, explaining class action rules in plain language to a potential client based on a case like State v. Kalima (Hawaiian Homestead class action).
• A judicial opinion background section, drawing from Pennoyer v. Neff, to assist in understanding the development of personal jurisdiction.
• A short bar journal-style article exploring modern discovery abuses and reforms.

In Advanced Civil Procedure, upper-level students complete:

• A law firm memo evaluating the settlement value of a case using a simulated case file.
• A memorandum in opposition to summary judgment, including supporting exhibits and declarations.
• A reflection paper applying WRGO? to public law litigation, such as the WWII-era Japanese American incarceration coram nobis cases.

Each assignment reinforces doctrinal mastery, communication skills, and ethical and analytical depth while connecting legal rules to real-world consequences.

Implementation Framework
This teaching practice follows a repeatable six-step process that other instructors can adapt:

1. Contextual Framing
   Doctrinal instruction is grounded in historical, political, or systemic contexts. Students engage with readings and discussions that tie legal rules to real events or lived experiences.
   
2. Genre and Audience Orientation
   Students review models of each writing genre and receive guidance on tone, structure, and rhetorical purpose tailored to a specific audience.
   
3. Drafting with Purpose
   Practice-based writing prompts are tied directly to procedural topics.
   
4. Feedback and Review
   In 1L courses, teaching assistants (TAs) provide rubric-based feedback. Top student samples are anonymized (with professor feedback) and shared with the class. In advanced courses, longer assignments are scaffolded (outline, draft, final) and returned with detailed professor rubric-based feedback.
   
5. Revision and Reflection
   Students can revise assignments and are encouraged to meet with the professor. In upper-level courses, one-on-one writing conferences are required, helping students build critical thinking and editing strategies.
   
6. Classroom Synthesis
   Each assignment concludes with class discussions that connect student insights to broader doctrinal and justice-oriented themes, preparing students for summative assessments. This provides an opportunity for developing oral communication skills, which are also necessary in the legal workforce.
   

For 1Ls, this teaching practice breaks down complex procedural content into manageable, low-stakes, ungraded writing tasks that simulate real legal practice throughout the semester. This helps students build confidence and analytical skills while preparing for the high-stakes final exam featuring practice-based prompts (typically worth 85% of the course grade per American Bar Association standards).

This teaching practice advances diversity, equity, and inclusion by:

• Including multiple modes of engagement (oral discussion, writing, peer feedback).
• Centering real-world issues—such as access to justice and systemic inequality—in class discussions and writing.
• Encouraging students to bring their backgrounds and experiences into the classroom.
• Providing structured support through rubrics, examples, and professor-led conferences.

This practice also helps students internalize a values-based view of legal practice—seeing themselves not just as technicians, but as future lawyers with power to influence systems.

Illustrative Prompt: Drafting a Client Email

Students research a real class action case, then draft a professional email to a potential client explaining FRCP class action rules in accessible language. Written from the perspective of law firm partners, the assignment requires clear communication, legal accuracy, and critical insights through the WRGO? lens. Students follow formatting and style guidelines and later discuss the assignment in class. (See supplemental materials for more information.)

Challenges and Considerations

Implementing this practice requires:

• Carefully designed, genre-specific assignments.
• Transparent rubrics aligned with learning outcomes.
• Course pacing that allows for feedback, revision, and reflection.

Faculty may benefit from collaborating with legal writing instructors, social justice scholars, or teaching assistants to support implementation. Though resource-intensive, students report a stronger command of doctrine, more confidence in legal writing, and a deeper sense of connection between legal rules and real-world impact, particularly in civil procedure courses that are notoriously considered to be abstract and challenging.

Overall, Procedure in Practice: The Critical Writing Lab transforms civil procedure from a rule-heavy, abstract course into a space for active legal reasoning, professional development, and critical reflection. By integrating real-world writing and critical contextual inquiry into the curriculum, it prepares students to not only understand and master the law, but to question, critique, and shape it—emerging as more thoughtful, capable, and justice-minded legal professionals.

Impact

Procedure in Practice: The Critical Writing Lab has had a clear and lasting impact on student learning, communication skills, and professional identity. In the most recent 1L course iterations, nearly all students (over 90%) met or exceeded expectations on the culminating genre-based writing projects, demonstrating the ability to apply procedural rules in real-world contexts and tailor their writing to specific audiences—clients, judges, and legal professionals. In the most recent offering of Advanced Civil Procedure, all students (100%) met or exceeded expectations on the writing assignments, elevating their advanced legal analysis, research, and writing skills for a litigation brief.

Course evaluations and informal feedback consistently reflect high levels of engagement, especially with the structured writing process and classroom discussions evolving around WRGO?. Students frequently report a shift in how they perceive procedural law—moving from abstract rules to systems that affect real people and communities.

One student who completed both 1L and Advanced Civil Procedure courses reflected: “It has changed the way I look at cases. I see more color, humanity, and compassion when I try to see what’s really going on. This [advanced civil procedure] class made me think about what kind of lawyer I want to be. Richardson really made me think I want to be a people-centered lawyer—recognizing the people behind the blackletter of the law. I will need to keep working on my WRGO skills, but this would not have been a realization without your guidance or your [civil procedure] classes.”

Supplemental Material

• Syllabi (1L Civ Pro and Adv Civ Pro – combined)
• Assignment Instructions Samples (1L Civ Pro and Adv Civ Pro – Combined)
• Rubric Samples (1L Civ Pro and Adv Civ Pro – Combined)
• Advanced Civil Procedure (Final MIO to MSJ)
• Advanced Civil Procedure (Final MIO to MSJ) – Student Example
• Advanced Civil Procedure (Final MIO to MSJ) – Student Example
• Advanced Civil Procedure (Final MIO to MSJ) – Student Example
• Advanced Civil Procedure (Final MIO to MSJ) – Student Example
• Advanced Civil Procedure (Final MIO to MSJ) – Student Example
• Advanced Civil Procedure (Final MIO to MSJ) – Student Example