Mastering Legal Analysis and Drafting

Mastering Legal Analysis and Drafting seeks to emphasize the fundamental structure and methods of legal drafting, which, the authors contend, is grounded in a surprisingly few but elemental rules and techniques of legal analysis and deployment of legal authorities amid relevant facts. It is designed to help the novice legal drafter identify those elemental rules and techniques and show how they are used to prepare effective legal writing in different formats, most of which share common elements and structures. The book begins with a discussion of legal analysis, followed by a discussion of general drafting principles and rules, and then proceeds to apply these concepts in the following chapters to specific forms of legal writing including: client letters, demand letters, research memoranda, motions and supporting documents, appellate briefs, contracts and instruments, and legislation. It closes with a chapter on "writing to build a record" that reprises the other chapters and highlights the key concepts.

George Kuney is the W.P. Toms Professor of Law and the Director of the Clayton Center for Entrepreneurial Law at The University of Tennessee College of Law. Donna C. Looper is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law.