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Course Details

Legal Practice Skills (Pierce) - Sec 1B

Spring 2025   LAW 510-002  

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Faculty
Sarah Ellen Pierce

Associate Dean for Legal Practice Skills

pierce3@law.upenn.edu
Additional Information

Skills Training
Oral Presentations
Team Projects
Drafting Legal Documents
Other Professional Skills:

Grading
100% Other (Honors/Credit/Fail)

Satisfies Senior Writing Requirement

No

Location

Class meets in person.

Meeting Times/Location
T 1:30PM - 2:45PM
Gittis Hall 213

Category
First-Year

Credits
2.0

Legal Practice Skills is a mandatory, first-year course that offers practical training in real-world writing and communication skills. Students learn how to find the legal principles that apply to a particular situation, how to combine different legal authorities to develop a cogent overall picture of the law, how to apply the law to a new set of facts, and how to present analyses and solutions orally and in writing. Because even the best and most insightful legal analysis cannot help a client unless it is communicated in a way that others can understand, students practice communicating formally, in legal documents and the kinds of formal oral presentations litigators deliver in court, and informally, as all lawyers do on a daily basis, electronically and in face-to-face meetings. Through a series of exercises designed to simulate actual law practice, Legal Practice Skills also exposes students to a range of other practice skills, including negotiation, basic contract drafting, and fact development. The course urges students to think broadly about how different assignments and tasks fit together and how they contribute to the broader goal of representing a client.

Course Concentrations

Skills Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding of the individual course skill; Demonstrate the ability to receive and implement feedback; Demonstrate an understanding of how and when the individual course skill is employed in practice.