Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2018
Abstract
When legal writing professors introduce CREAC (or IRAC, TREAT, etc.), our examples necessarily use some area of substantive law to demonstrate how the pieces of legal analysis fit together. And when we ask students to try drafting a CREAC analysis, they also have to learn the relevant substantive law first. Students might be asked to analyze whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor or whether the elements of a tort claim are satisfied. But that means that students need to learn the relevant substantive doctrine while they are also grappling with the basics of CREAC. In the language of learning pedagogy, that imposes an extraneous cognitive load that hampers their ability to focus just on understanding the pieces of CREAC. Inspired by examples from other disciplines, I realized that students could better learn how and why the pieces of CREAC fit together if I gave them an assignment for which they already knew the substantive law and court decisions. To do that, for the past several years I have been collaborating with doctrinal colleagues to use material from their classes to help students learn the fundamentals of CREAC.
Recommended Citation
Wilensky, Beth H. "Collaboration with Doctrinal Faculty to Introduce CREAC." Second Draft: Bull. Legal Writing Inst. 31, no. 2 (2018): 32-4.