Welcome to Lawyering Skills

Attachments: 
Ten Point Template for Briefing a Case
Craft Case Brief Exercise  
Lefkowitz Case Brief Class Exercise  
State v Peterson

Hello Class of 2023,

In case you do not have your UND email set up yet or you don’t access it on a regular basis (please start to do so when Orientation Week and classes begin), please see the message below for your Lawyering Skills faculty members.

Your final weekly email from me is coming soon and will be filled with lots of information but I wanted to ensure you all got this and I didn’t forget.

Take care!

Aleisha

Message from Lawyering Skills Faculty:

Dear Class of 2023,

Welcome to the University of North Dakota School of Law! We are really looking forward to meeting you this fall and welcoming you to our extraordinary law school community.

Prior to your first Lawyering Skills class, you will need to do three things:

1. First, you will need to secure all your assigned text books for the class.  In the A Lawyer Writes text, please read Chapter 2: Sources and Systems of Law (pp. 15 – 31) (skim examples only), and Chapter 3: Reading for Comprehension: Introduction & Section 3.2 only (pp. 33 – 34; 45 – 59).
2. Next, you will be taking advantage of an important new resource for all incoming students. UND Law has partnered with Harvard Law School to offer a short but information-packed online introduction to law school called Zero-L.

Made up of about two hours of lively video lectures and intermittent comprehension checks, Zero-L will provide you with an overview of key features of the U.S. legal system, including some foundational concepts and vocabulary of law school. Zero-L will give you background that will help you get off to a great start when classes begin.

You’ll be receiving an email next week about how to log in to the Zero-L platform.  Please follow the instructions to register, log in, and complete the online readings and comprehension checks for the Introduction to Zero-L and Introduction to Law and the Court Systems module lessons of the Zero-L program.  Your Lawyering Skills faculty are excited to start their time with you by building on this fundamental knowledge.

This new program is in a pilot phase and your class will be the first UND Law students to participate. We will solicit your feedback about your experience on behalf of UND Law and Harvard Law School to help refine and improve this innovative course. 

3. Finally, please review the attached materials and then visit the Class of 2023 page on the University of North Dakota Law School website at https://law.und.edu/future-students/class-2023.html or use the following link: https://law.und.edu/future-students/weekly-email/lawyering-skills.html to watch your first Lawyering Skills I class session which will cover how to read and brief a case.  After watching this instructional video, we hope you will be able to brief any cases assigned for the first week of your law school classes.

We are so glad to welcome you to this amazing community and profession – and to provide you these resources to help you make the very most of your experience here.

Warm regards,

Your Lawyering Skills faculty

Professors Jennifer Cook, John Cook, and Jenny Samarzja