Click on ‘Mediation Brief’ to view an example of Tara’s legal writing.
The mediation brief I constructed for my Legal Writing class describes the facts and legal discussion regarding a fake lawsuit. By researching and breaking up legal code into tangible parts, I analyzed whether Tommy Trusting violated a law. I used Microsoft Word to create this document, which is a software legal professionals tend to use. Although this document was created for my Legal Writing professor to grade, in a real life situation, this brief would be for a mediator. My brief’s goal was to analyze Tommy Trusting’s actions and communicate to the mediator that he did not violate a particular civil code.
Some of my skills that are demonstrated in the brief are research, analysis, and argumentative writing. For example, I researched a California Civil Code and used Black’s Law Dictionary to see how words in the code applied to Tommy. Then, I used my research and analysis of words in the law to argue that Tommy was not liable for damages. For example, I clarified that ‘knowingly furnish,’ a phrase in the law, does not apply to Tommy because he did not know or intend for the alcohol he purchased to be obtained by a minor.