Washington (WA) General Practice CLE Course Catalog

It’s all about putting things in the right order. It’s about different pieces interacting in a way that makes sense. No, Stuart Teicher is not talking about a symphony or your greatest pop song, he’s talking about your legal writing. In this interesting program, Stuart will tackle the hardest part of legal writing — the organization phase. He’ll teach us how to create a mindmap, and he’ll get into the details about outlining. In the end you’ll learn how to put together a legal writing that will make others sing your praises.

Technology has driven transformation for many areas of the legal profession aiding with tools covering contract management and e-discovery to cloud based systems and big data and analytics. Yet, dispute resolution has yet to feel the full impact of this transformation. What stage are we currently facing? Where will this take us in the next five years?

It is inevitable that we must face change at some point. At times, we can predict the changes ahead, but it is not always possible to see what lies just beyond the horizon. Embedding agility and resilience within your legal operations team and wider legal department can be thus crucial to responding to these unforeseen challenges with a well-orchestrated plan. Building strong relationships with external partners, including law firms, ALSPs and LPOs, can be further important to deliver a well-executed plan that effectively navigates unforeseen change on a global scale.

Students and young lawyers often use an "ad hoc" approach treating "every problem as a different problem." Since I have needed to teach students who have never done transactional law how to begin working on complex projects very quickly, I have tried to create a teachable, universal approach to beginning transactional assignments. This approach I will teach holds true whether the solution requires a client call, an internal/external memo, drafting a contract, or prosecuting intellectual property (copyright, trademark, or patent registrations).

This program is for 0-3 year attorneys who have never experienced transactional law (and maybe even never worked in a law office) to rethink the "litigation-first" perspective that gets ingrained during law school. For a large number of law students interested in working with business transactions, as in-house counsel, in IP prosecution, licensing, etc., we want to provide guidance for what you should be thinking about on your first day of an internship, your first day at a job, or your first day running your own firm. These are tips to distinguish yourself on your first day even if you don't have any direct transactional experience.