Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments is a biannual, refereed online journal that publishes academic writing assignments accompanied by reflective essays. We publish assignments directed at both undergraduate and graduate students from all academic disciplines. Prompt is an open-access journal, with all articles freely available to all readers. Browse our current issue below, and explore past issues in our archives. View our About page for more information about our journal, including information for authors.
Current Issue
Vol. 8 No. 2 (2024): In Limine: Writing assignments at the transition from undergraduate to law school
This special issue explores writing assignments given in legal writing courses at the undergraduate level and early in the law-school curriculum, assignments at the threshhold of law school. Lawyers are familiar with the motion in limine, which advocates make to judges, for example, to exclude expert witnesses or evidence before the jury sees them. The Latin term limen refers to the threshold of a home, so the motion occurs on the threshold. Law students, too, must cross the threshold from undergraduate study to professional school, and that transition is not thoroughly studied. Among the many challenges students face while in limine are the requirements of a more formal type of writing in law school than that for which their undergraduate training has prepared them. But many students come to law school having taken some kind of undergraduate writing class focused on legal writing. Meanwhile, critical scholarship and current events counsel some skepticism regarding the conventions of legal communication and rhetoric. Into this environment come teachers who are often contingent workers or hold lower status (whether at the undergraduate or law-school level). Understanding the types of writing assignments these teachers assign is thus important to legal training, the legal profession, and the broader culture. Published: 2024-07-16
Full Issue
Editor's Note, Rick Fisher, Kelly Kinney
Guest Editors' Note, Lindsay Head, Antonio Elefano, Brian N. Larson
Articles
A Promising Amalgamation: Law, Poetry, and the Making of Legal Writers, Sara F. Cates
Setting the Argument: Authoring in the Law School Transition, Mark A. Hannah
Crossing the Threshold with Apples, Potatoes, and Limes Using the "Grocer’s Dilemma" to Introduce Law Students to Malleability in the Law, Kirsten K. Davis
The Legal Writing Manual: Self-regulated Learning for First-year Law Students, Susan Tanner, Ryan Roderick
Breaking the Rules, Rima Sirota
Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments is an independent journal hosted and supported by the WAC Clearinghouse. It receives archival support from the California Institute of Technology Library. Copyright © by the authors and editors of the publications in the journal. Work in Prompt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. ISSN 2476-0943