Writing-Across-the-Law-School-Curriculum: Theoretical Justifications, Curricular Implications
Pamela Lysaght & Cristina D. Lockwood
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A second approach to writing across the curriculum—learning to write in the discipline—has received less attention. This approach uses the features of written communication in a specific discipline to teach students to enter that discipline’s discourse community. It differs significantly from the writing-to-learn approach: “writing within the disciplines . . . involves embracing the conventional genres, audiences, and purposes of writing in a particular discipline, involves the student’s entry into a discourse community not yet her own, learning its language, its customs, its forms of life. . . . [T]he student is, in a way, herself consumed by the disciplinary community, and thus becomes a part of that community—an anthropologist, an historian, a lawyer.” Writing in the discipline has strong potential for law school curricula because it is supported by common themes among various learning theories. Moreover, this approach to writing across the curriculum reconciles various compositional theories. The article concludes with a proposal for a writing-across-the-law-school-curriculum program that can enhance students’ learning and better prepare them to enter the legal profession.