Apropos of nothing, I remember that the most fun class was contracts. We had a prof who was a trifle eccentric - my favourite was an exam he gave, in which he had us listen to this song:
http://www.wtv-zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/13/rabbits.htm
And the only question was “comment on the legal issues raised”. 
Ha! when I teach a law class, that would get double marks off! I tell the little lab rats at the start of term that footnotes should just have citations. If it’s important enough to discuss at length, it should be in the text of the paper. Putting in slab-quotes from a case in a footnote is even worse than using your own thoughts on an issue to pad a footnote.
I follow the same rule when I write a paper myself - my footnotes rarely have anything more than citations and perhaps some explanatory notes, but not slab-quotes from a case.
Perhaps style is notably different in Canada, as this is the opposite of what I was taught. Only points directly relevant to your argument should be in text; supplementary information always goes in the footnotes. One third to half of the paper is usually below the line (in the footnotes). “Footnotes should just have citations” is definitely not a strong description of the U.S. legal writing style.
As seen in the
Stanford Law Review
NYU Law Review (check out page 23 - its entirely footnotes! p. 22 contains a large block quote from Dred Scot… etc))
etc.
I know - I hate US journal style! I’m very much a “less is more” kind of stylist. I may be influenced by the fact that our Supreme Court doesn’t use footnotes except on very rare occasions, and the Court of Appeal I appear in front of only uses footnotes for citations, not side bars.
Have you taken or do you plan to take the bar exam? I know in some states it isn’t needed if you graduate from specific schools.
Brian
Pretty funny! Ok, I’ll have a go… illegal contract (sex as consideration), “where both are guilty the Defendant is in the better position” … so far she keeps the money, but wait! no meeting of the minds, he gets it back but wait! unilateral mistake, she keeps it. how’d I do?
I will sit for the Bar in late July.
As far as I know Wisconsin is the only state where you waive into the bar by graduating from certain schools. (UW and I think Marquette).
I can vaguely remember working in a pun based on the clean hands doctrine. 
I think I ultimately came down on the side that he gets his cash back - no real contract had been formed because there was no real meeting of the minds, and she was bargaining in bad faith - the fact that the guy wanted something ‘contrary to public policy’ and thus unenforceable was irrelevant (that would only be relevant if he was seeking damages for breach, rather than his cash back). But I can’t remember what the general consensus was.
Anyway, I thought it was a classic law school exam. 
The heavy emphasis on essay style in legal education has always somewhat irked me, as the far more useful skills of legal writing - facta and the like for litigation, contracts and such documents, and legal opinions for clients - tend to get taught as an afterthough if at all - yet the average lawyer is going to be doing far more of the latter than the former.
In particular, the notion that writing a set number of pages and showing lots of work as important in giving your opinion is misplaced, what clients really want is brevity and accuracy: being able to hone in on the real issue and skewer it. Most of my corporate clents want whatever I have to say to be said in a page or two.
Exactly - I never write a brief or a memo with footnotes, because they get in the way of the argument or opinion.
We are not taught to write a memo, contract, brief or any other court paper with footnotes.
But, absent other information, when someone asks for tips on “paper writing” I assume they are asking about an academic paper. Otherwise they would ask about a memo, brief, &cetera.
I’ve taken Legal Writing (required - memoranda), Appellate Advocacy (required - briefs & oral advocacy), Transactional Lawyering (contracts drafting and evaluating contracts) and Advanced Appellate Advocacy. And my NY Civil Practice professor was a judge and required two "court opinions. " 
Actually it is the “academic style” that is taught as an afterthought – at least in my school, it is not taught at all, you just pick it up working on a journal/law review.
Sure - but I think that the point Malthus and I are both making is that it seems to be an awful big disconnect - if we’re taught that the best way to write briefs and memos is to eschew footnotes, then it seems very odd that the academic model for written materials is so footnote-heavy. If the reason to avoid long footnotes is that it impairs the effectiveness of the advocacy or the opinion, what does that say about an academic style of writing that is so laden with footnotes?
That the academic model is useful mainly for other academics?
Back in my day, now more than a decade ago, at University of Toronto Law School there was a pretty hefty bias in favour of the academic. One major difference between US and Canadian legal education is the institution of “articling” - that is, a year of mandatory apprenticeship - prior to writing the Bar exams; I suppose that the assumption was that you would learn the more practical stuff that way.
I disagree that there is a heavy emphasis on academic style in legal education on the U.S. Only insofar that it is prestigious to be accepted to a law review/journal, so the best students tend to be very familiar with the academic style. Academic style is not taught, and rarely required, at my law school. Then again my law school is known for its “skills programs”
(I forgot in my list of skills courses, I also took Trial Advocacy - a 10 day, 10hr/day program including a full jury trial)
As you know, the assumption still is that you learn the practical stuff through articling. There have been many times during my articling year that I wish my law school had been less theoretical and more practical. Our school did have a required course on “Legal Research, Writing, and Advocacy,” where you learned and practiced the basics of case briefs, memos, facta, and oral appellate advocacy; and certainly, there were more advanced electives in advocacy, alternate dispute resolution, interviewing, and similar. But for the most part, the emphasis seemed to be on blackletter law, and any papers were definitely academic. I well remember, about two weeks in to my articles, being asked to draft a certain document that I had never even heard of. I learned about it quickly!
In fairness, I will say that here in western Canada, some effort has been made to ensure that articling students learn practical skills during the articling year–our bar admission course (six months long and done concurrently with articles) consists mainly of being given hypothetical sets of facts and drafting the necessary documents required by those facts: contracts, statements of claim and defense, wills, opinion letters on real estate matters, and suchlike. It is good practice, but owing to the fact that it is online, there is little opportunity for real-time interaction with the instructors. You can e-mail them with questions, and they are very good about responding as soon as they can, but there’s still something lacking.
In Canada, do people take summer jobs/summer clerkships? Because that is the norm in the U.S. and another place where American law students learn about everyday lawyer stuff.
The Multistate Performance Test(MPT) is a relatively new feature of the multistate Bar exam - I believe it was added in 1997.
http://www.ncbex.org/multistate-tests/mpt/mpt-faqs/description1/
About 34 states & territories use it as part of their Bar Exam (including New York)
Some do, but it sounds like there is a much lower emphasis on summer law jobs than you have, so some don’t.
Some of my classmates took an extreme interest in summer law firm jobs (to the best of my knowledge, courts do not offer summer clerkships to law students). They saw it as a way to get a foot in the door when they graduated and needed to find a place to article. Firms recruited on-campus for summer jobs, and the competition could be intense. Many people who applied and were interviewed but not offered a summer job were crushed.
Other students preferred to avoid the competition and did other things–some of my classmates did such things as construction work, house painting, office temping, or whatever else presented itself that wasn’t law. They dealt with it enough as students at school, and would deal with it plenty when they became lawyers, so they saw this as their last opportunity to do non-law work. I was one of these, and spent my summers working in a factory.
Regardless, I’d guess that those students who did land summer law firm jobs wouldn’t have been exposed to very many practical skills. It is a very small sampling, but the two summer students at my firm aren’t doing much beyond legal research and producing research memos. They are being exposed to the way a law firm runs and the documents it produces and sees, which is beneficial, but they’re doing very little, if any “lawyer work.” I’m unsure if they would even be allowed to do anything resembling practice, since they are not members of the provincial bar.
I think that is true of the “Big Firm” summer jobs in the U.S. as well – responsibilities are pretty limited, competition is very fierce, and the pay is just stupidly high. Until recently (like, this year) landing a summer position of this type was a near-guarantee of a lucrative job offer on graduation.
However, nearly all law students take some paid legal summer position, most often for smaller firms or even sole practitioners where they do a little of everything. These usually pay something, in NYC the pay is in the $10-20/hr range, usually offering 20-40hrs/week. (there are also summer judicial clerkships and pulic sector which often does not pay) Most people would NOT work only at a non-legal summer job unless it paid REALLY well and there was a real crisis scenario financially, even then they would try to fit in some summer legal work somehow. Lacking summer experiences is definite black mark on a resume.
For example, the 3 attorney firm I worked for both summers had an employment discrimination case. First I wrote a memo explaining the different requirements of a cause of action under City, State and Federal Law. The next task I worked on was to go through every deposition and make up a timeline, indexed to the depositions, as to who said what happened when. Lastly, I sat in on a deposition of a non-party witness relating to the case.
Law students cannot file anything under their own name. However, they can write draft versions under the direct supervision of an attorney, same as a paralegal. The attorney must review it, sign it, and is responsible for its content. This is permitted under Rule 5.3 of the Model Rules of professional conduct.
On another occasion I wrote a draft appellate brief for our State intermediate appeals court. My supervising attorney communicated with me continuously about the progress of the project, and reviewed and revised it before submission. (I am proud to say, the edits were minimal and we won the appeal )
Other than Big Firm and small firm jobs, other jobs that friends of mine had included
-clerking for a City Adminstrative law judge, trial court judge, or appellate judge.
-interning with the division of the City’s internal Law department which defends the City against suits.
-Interning at a public defender, District Attorney’s office, or police department
-Interning with well-known Legal advocacy not-for-profits like the ACLU, Lambda Legal, etc.
**As I mentioned, for the most part these public sector jobs don’t pay. There are sources of funding, not the least of which at my school, was a student-run Foundation which provided stipends for unpaid public sector positions. Or you might take a half-time unpaid position and do regular worky work on the side.
First, I’d have to know if marijuana is legal in your state?