Student Resources

The Center for Writing Excellence provides all UNT Dallas College of Law students access to extensive legal writing resources. Because legal writing is integrated throughout the College of Law’s curriculum — from the first-year until graduation — regular access to writing resources, supplemental tutoring, and writing workshops is critical. In addition to our Director of Legal Writing and Assistant Director of Legal Writing — who are full-time professors with office hours open to all students — the Center for Writing Excellence provides the resources and services detailed below.

One-on-one Appointments with Our Legal Writing Specialist

Students who are struggling with legal writing either in the first-year program or in an upper-level writing segment or advanced writing course, are encouraged to schedule a meeting with our Legal Writing Specialist, Professor Diana Howard. Professor Howard schedules individual appointments with students to improve a student’s writing skills and to help with writing assignments. She works closely with our legal writing professors and our substantive course professors to ensure that she is familiar with the writing assignments as well as expectations of each professor. By being “plugged in” to all of the writing assignments at the College of Law, Professor Howard is in a unique position to help students achieve their maximum potential with respect to legal writing throughout law school.

Schedule Appointment

Quick Lessons for Clear Writing

The Center for Writing Excellence hosts Quick Lessons through the year. These quick lessons — open to all students and during the lunch and dinner hours — are on topics that will improve every students’ legal writing. Past quick lessons have been on topics such as eliminating passive voice, improving grammar, drafting topic sentences, and reviewing citations.

Teaching Fellows

Teaching Fellows are upper-level College of Law students, who did well in first-year legal writing and have applied to be a part of the College of Law’s elite Teaching Fellows Program. As Teaching Fellows, students take an advanced legal writing class in the fall semester to fine-tune their writing skills in a small classroom setting and to prepare them to assist first-year students as Teaching Fellows in the legal writing classroom in the spring semester. During the spring semester, Teaching Fellows hold office hours during which they are available to help first-year students with their legal writing assignments. At least one Teaching Fellow is assigned to each spring-semester first-year section of legal writing assists with running that section’s legal writing workshop. Teaching Fellows — while not a replacement for a student’s full-time and adjunct legal writing professors — are an excellent resource to assist students in becoming proficient legal writers.

Publications

Our Director and Assistant Director of Legal Writing regularly publish scholarly articles on legal writing. The publications are specifically designed and written with the audience of law students in mind. Students can read the articles to review topics covered in first-year legal writing as well as review articles regarding advanced writing topics. 

ESL AND BILINGUAL STUDENT RESOURCES

Law school is difficult for everyone. After just the first week of classes, students realize that their professors are asking them to write, to read, and to think in a whole new language: the language of law. For bilingual and ESL students, this difficulty is compounded. Not only do bilingual and ESL students at times struggle with non-legal English, now professors are asking them to write, to read, and to think in a specialized version of English. You are not in this endeavor alone. The Center for Writing Excellence is here to help you navigate the language of the law and to master legal writing.