Spring 2025
Professor(s):
Whitney Heard (CLINICAL FACULTY [405(b)])
Credits: 2
Course Areas: 1st Year - Section B
Time: 2:00p-3:00p T 1:00p-2:00p TH Location: 211
Course Outline: In Lawyering Skills and Strategies I you will develop the following essential lawyering skills: Identifying and analyzing legal issues; conducting legal research; and writing real world legal documents. In contrast to other 1L classes, in LSS you will not learn law in the abstract. Rather, you will learn how to use the substantive law you are learning in your other classes in practice. This results in several immediate benefits to you. You will learn skills that make you a better law student. You will prepare writing samples necessary for judicial internship and law firm summer clerkship applications. And you will learn and hone the research, writing, and oral communications skills employers demand. Some writing and revising will be completed in class. I will assign limited outside reading so that you can complete other writing and revising outside of class. I will be mindful of your time.
Course Syllabus: Course Information Sheet and Syllabus
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.
Prerequisites:
First Day Assignments:
Final Exam Schedule:
This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: No
Experiential Course Type: No
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA: No
Pass-Fail Student Election: Unavailable (Required Course)
Course Materials
Book(s) Required
Course Materials: Book Required - see below
Required Textbooks: The required books for Spring 2025 include the following:
1) Persuasive Advocacy in Action: A Workbook for Law Students, by Robin Boyle-Laisure and Laura P. Graham. (https://cap-press.com/books/isbn/9781531026929/Persuasive-Advocacy-in-Action) The ISBN is 978-1-5310-2692-9, and the eISBN is 978-1-5310-2693-6. Students should purchase the print version of this text.
2) An Introduction to Contract Drafting (2d ed. 2013), by William K. Sjostrom, Jr. (https://www.westacademic.com/Sjostroms-An-Introduction-to-Contract-Drafting-2d-9780314287236). The ISBN is 9780314287236. Students may purchase or rent a print or eBook version of this text.
3) The Greenbook: Texas Rules of Form (15th ed. 2022). (https://texaslawjournals.directfrompublisher.com/catalog/book/texas-rules-form-greenbook) The ISBN is 978-1-878674-11-1. Students should have a print version of The Greenbook.
4) The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (21st ed. 2020), published by the Harvard Law Review Association. (https://www.legalbluebook.com/buy) The ISBN is 978-0-578-66615-0. Students should have a print version of The Bluebook.
Recommended Textbook: The recommended book for Spring 2025 is the following:
Manual on Usage & Style (15th ed. 2020), published by the Texas Law Review Association. (https://law.utexas.edu/publications/books/manual-on-usage-and-style-mous/) The ISBN is 1-878674-59-5. Students may buy the print version or eBook version of this text.
