Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [128]
You can still use the cases from your state as illustrations and as support for your argument. You'll need to do some more research on just how similar the law in the other states really is, but that tends to be considerably easier than researching a new subject from scratch.
Similarly, see to what extent you can easily generalize your fact pattern. Say your memo was about the remedies for unauthorized publication of the fact that someone is HIV-positive. You can probably broaden the work to cover unauthorized publication of the fact that someone has any medical condition that would lead some to shun him.
You might have to add a bit more analysis—there may be legally significant differences between HIV status and other medical conditions—but this may mean only a bit of extra work. Broadening the subject to “remedies for any unauthorized publication of private facts,” however, would likely be much harder (and might therefore not be worth doing) because so much of your original analysis was likely to have been tied to your focus on a medical condition.
E. Connect
Finally, your work may profit from connections to debates in related areas (see Part V.F, p. 70), and these connections may even shed light on the proper outcome of those debates. Briefly but cogently discussing such connections can make your piece more useful and more impressive.
XXI. WRITING SEMINAR TERM PAPERS
A. Introduction: Comparing Seminar Term Papers and Academic Articles
Seminar term papers are often much like law review articles, though the rules vary from instructor to instructor.
1. Nonobviousness
Seminar term papers should be nonobvious. Your goal is to impress the professor with your smarts and your creative thinking. Papers that apply settled law or well-established arguments to slightly new fact patterns generally won't serve this goal, and won't get a good grade.
2. Soundness
Seminar term papers should of course be sound; and your instructor, who specializes in the seminar topic, will be a much more critical judge of the quality of your arguments than a casual reader of an article would be.
3. Writing and structure
Seminar term papers should be well-written and well-organized. True, you have a captive audience, and needn't worry that a boring introduction will lose the reader. But most instructors see the seminar paper as a way of teaching you how to write better, and they will therefore prefer that your paper be as engaging as possible. Likewise, though some professors might let you omit some sections—such as the discussion of the background legal rules—others might see the paper as an opportunity for you to practice writing sections like this, and will therefore insist that they be done well.
4. Utility
Utility may be less necessary, depending on what your professor prefers. As Part I.E pointed out, utility is relative: The goal is to make the work as useful as possible given your area of interest. Not every work needs to appeal to thousands of lawyers, but once you choose a topic, you should do what it takes to make your work appeal to as many readers as possible.
In a seminar paper, the instructor may relax this constraint, since the work will have exactly one reader. Still, some instructors may insist on utility even there, because they want you to use this opportunity to learn the skill of making articles more useful.
5. Novelty
Novelty may also be less necessary, depending on what your professor prefers. Because the paper isn't meant to be published, your teacher might conclude that your paper doesn't have to say something that's genuinely new to those who work in the field. It may be enough that it say something that is new to you, and that shows that you've thought about the matter yourself.
Many instructors, though, prefer that seminar papers be novel. First, seminars are supposed to teach you to think creatively and originally—to come up with ideas that others haven't had.
Second, if your paper does say something that someone else has