The final paper for my Torts course, summarizing the history of tort reform in Colorado and taking a position on what kinds of reform are most appropriate. I chose to focus on medical malpractice torts, as the rapid growth in health care costs as a percentage of GDP and the recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. health care reform, a.k.a. Obamacare) made the topic particularly apropos.
Tag Archives: documents
Comparison of IRAC briefs, Part 2
As promised in my earlier post, here are two IRAC (Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion) briefs from later in the semester. You can see how I’ve got a better sense of what needs citations and what does not, as well as gotten better at condensing the rule and the verdict down as far as possible without losing the essential information.
The first is from my Torts class, and presented a particular challenge as there were 5 separate issues being contested in the appeal.
Here is the feedback I received from Prof. Chase on my work:
The second is also a Torts brief. I feel this one represents my best work in distilling a lengthy opinion down into the shortest possible document that still covers all the relevant facts.
And the audio feedback for the Turner v. General Motors brief:
Comparison of IRAC briefs, Part 1
Case briefing was one of the most important skills taught this semester, comprising a major part of the grade and the instruction time in Introduction to Law, Family Law, and Torts. It sounds like it should be a snap–just pick out the most salient features of the case, arrange them in order, and then you’re done. Yes, it sounds very easy…right up until you’re eyeballs deep in a court opinion bristling with references to other cases trying not to get distracted from the thread of the argument and miss the one sentence in seven pages that contains the actual ruling. Still, once you’ve gotten over the initial learning curve with briefs, it gets easier to find those needles in the haystack.
The brief format used in all my classes was called IRAC, for Issues, Ruling, Analysis, and Conclusion. Ruling and Analysis are in the opposite order in the brief as in the court opinion, so they are often the hardest to lay out clearly.
What follows are two briefs I did very early on in the semester. In a second post, I’ll provide two more done at the end of the semester for comparison.
First, a brief from Introduction to Law:
And second, one from Torts:
Articles of Incorporation
One of the last assignments during Introduction to the Law was to compose articles of incorporation for a for-profit entity. I was frankly stunned at how short such a document could be–stunned enough that when I found the instructions on the Colorado Secretary of State website I thought it must have been an error. But no! It was entirely correct.
The forms provided on that website, by the bye, are available only in non-fillable/non-copy-paste-able PDF format, forcing one to either print them out and fill in the blanks by hand or to transcribe the necessary language into a word processor.
And the Department of State is not the only governmental agency that seemingly encourages electronic filing but fails to format their digital documents properly. The Federal District Court for Colorado uses all .rtf or WordPerfect document types, despite the ubiquity of Microsoft Office and the availability of non-proprietary formats. The El Paso County Combined Courts have family law forms with checkboxes made not with macros but with Wingdings. It took me a good half an hour just to figure out what key combination in Wingdings produces something approximating a ticked checkbox.
Suddenly instruction in how to apply styles in MS Word seems a bit more important.
Durable power of attorney
An assignment from the unit on legal agency in Introduction to Law. I had dealt a few times before with general and specific powers of attorney in tax preparation situations, although in those cases I was checking the documents to verify that a military spouse was properly authorized to file on behalf of a deployed service member, instead of composing the documents to meet future needs. One of my instructor’s comments in the assignment feedback was that she found general powers of attorney quite scary, given what a poor agent could do with the power to sign contracts in the name of the principle!
Comparison between two Last Will and Testaments
This example was the first assignment for my Computers and the Law course, meant to display the use of Microsoft Word more than familiarity with the provisions and format of estate documents. I utilized online examples to find the best legal terminology I could with my current skills.
The second example, from Introduction to the Law about 3 months later, comes in three parts. The assignment was to create a joint will and a living trust agreement, but my research revealed that joint wills are discouraged (though still technically legal) in Colorado. Instead, I executed a pair of mutual wills and prepared the requisite trust agreement. By this point I had gained a much better grasp of the necessary provisions of a proper will and was able to modify the standard language more extensively to suit my needs.
Comparison between 2 Memorandums of Law
This first example, a memorandum on paralegal ethics and Colorado rules regarding Unauthorized Practice of Law, was one of the first assignments I completed for Introduction to the Law, the ground-level course in the paralegal program. As you can see, while my general writing skills were fairly good I had not yet entirely mastered the preferred format and writing style.
The second example is from two months later, and it shows a better understanding of how to present a case brief in memorandum form and also more detailed legal reasoning.
More musings on legal ethics and information technology
Continuing on in the spirit of my post on “The Dream of the Paperless Office”, this is a research piece I did for Computers and the Law as a make-up for assignments that required software inaccessible to students with a used copy of the (exorbitantly expensive) textbook. While I understand that creating a textbook is a time-consuming process (I should know, one of my college courses created a free online textbook as a final project) and the creators deserve to be compensated for their effort, if prices become so steep that only a few students in the class can stretch their budget to accommodate a new copy of the course text, the publisher’s bottom line is still going to hurt. With free options like Coursera and Open University growing by leaps and bounds, publishers need to rethink their business models from the ground up or risk becoming obsolete.
Separation Agreement
Family Law’s toughest assignment by far was the separation agreement for the Jack and Jill Hill divorce case. The separation agreement is where the differences between the spouses really have to be confronted for the first time and the nitty gritty of breaking apart a shared household puts everyone’s nerves on edge. No wonder, then, that each section of the document has a “yes we do agree on this/no we’re still fighting about it” box to check. Divorces, like torts, are grueling but necessary processes. The anguish of divorce today is piddling compared to the long-term personal misery and resentment of the fault-based divorce days when the law forced you to lie in order to get closure. There’s a reason the government put an end to that and now allows people an escape when “the legitimate objects of marriage have been destroyed”.
Civil pleading and answer
This assignment was interesting in that it forced one to look at a case from both sides and think about the differing points of view and legal strategies involved. Torts are not my favorite area of law (administrative law is really more my cup of Scottish breakfast tea) but just as “democracy is the worst possible system of government…except for all the other ones” (hat-tip to Winston Churchill) the tort system of conflict resolution is the imperfect best case scenario for disputes that used to be settled by blood feud. Humans are going to step on one another’s toes and crash into one another’s cars as long as we endure as a species so it’s vital that we have a way to systematically deal with these transgressions.
The complaint:
And the reply:
Legal (Para)Eagle: Kimberley Hoff's legal blog 