Week 4: Revise Your Trial Court Brief
Instructions
Submit your revision in the same document as your week 3 submission. Submit ONE Word Document. For example, for week 4, pages 1-5, will be your revised trial court brief, and pages 6-10 will be your original trial court brief ( week 3). (*there is no feedback to give on the week 3).
Revise the trial court brief that you submitted last week, based on the new information that you have gained this week. As before, use the CUNY Trial Court Brief Checklist and the Personal Legal Writing Checklists that you have been using in this course to date.
Your trial court brief should be written according to the CUNY Trial Court Checklist and be no more than 7 pages long, 12 point font, double-spaced. Your analysis must be in your own words. If necessary, you may use one short quotation. You should write as concisely as possible (there is no need for your brief to be 7 pages long if you can condense your work while maintaining accuracy and precision), as you paraphrase and simplify the words of the authors of your selected resources. When writing a trial court brief, all information must be properly cited.
Submit your revised trial court brief as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx files) so that it can be checked by Turnitin. When you submit your trial court brief, include proof that you located your resources by using either Nexis Uni or Fastcase through the APUS Library.
NOTES:
1. When you submit your assignment, a Turnitin Originality Report will be automatically generated. This functionality has been set so that you can receive an Originality Report each time that you submit your assignment. [I strongly recommend that you submit it (perhaps several times, depending upon how you write) several times before this assignment is due. That way, you can use the Originality Reports for your earlier drafts as a tool to ensure that you will not have any potential plagiarism issues with your final draft, which will be graded.]
3. Ensure that you write formally and use proper grammar, spelling, and citations (in-text or in footnotes, but not in endnotes). Be especially sure that you include a thesis statement and employ both a rhetorical strategy and perspective.
4. Double-check all of your citations before submitting your final version. You MUST use the Bluebook to do this. (This is an often-overlooked part of the multi-phased iterative writing process. Yet it is incredibly significant; real cases have been lost due to inaccurate Bluebook citations or citations that have not been Shepardized!) You cannot rely on the citations that are in your text or in the case(s) you use. This is because sometimes others make mistakes. But it is also primarily because the proper format for a citation is partly determined by the context in which the citation is used.
5. Proofread your paper several times to ensure that you have no errors and to ensure that your paper flows well and is well organized so that your thoughts flow neatly from one idea to the next.
Please upload your work here in the Week 4 Assignment section when you are ready.
Attachments
Personal_Legal_Writing_Checklist.pdf(75.13 KB)
LSTD505_Underlying_Fact_Pattern.pdf(95.34 KB)