Teaching Students to Use Feedback to Improve Their Legal-Writing Skills

In an age in which writing-software programs tout formative feedback on student papers and advertise clear and compelling sentences, the roles of professor and student in the assessment and outcome-achievement process may appear passive, or even supplanted. Using feedback to improve learning, however, requires both professor and student to play active roles. In legal education, law professors are tasked with identifying and assessing learning outcomes. And much has been written about these tasks as they relate to both doctrinal and legal-writing courses. But less attention has been devoted to law students’ role in responding to feedback on their writing and law professors’ role in teaching students to use that feedback to improve legal-writing skills