Mission Statement

The Legal Writing Center’s mission is to support the Legal Writing Program’s goal of helping students become strong legal writers across the curriculum. Through individualized conferences, professional writing specialists guide students through all aspects of their writing processes and further prepare them for academic and professional writing. Another goal of the Center is to maintain an open line of communication among writing specialists, law students, and legal writing faculty.

What to Expect
Law students should expect one-on-one conferences with writing specialists who will help students hone their basic and legal writing skills. Students may receive assistance on genres such as memos, briefs, cover letters, e-mails, and writing samples. The writing specialists will address writing concerns that are important to law students’ academic, professional, and personal growth such as:

• Transitioning to the legal discourse community and positioning themselves in that community;
• Accepting legal writing as a rhetorical situation that includes writers, genres, exigencies, audiences, purposes, substance, contexts, and constraints;
• Merging legal substance and rhetoric to produce persuasive legal genres;
• Improving drafts by accepting writing as a process that is executed in academic and professional discourse communities; and
• Mastering standard American English and legal citations.

Writing specialists also facilitate interactive writing workshops that address a variety of writing topics.

Where are We?
Room 211 Albert L. Turner Law Building

The Staff
The Legal Writing Center is staffed by trained professionals:

Courtney Bryant, J.D., Legal Writing Specialist
The legal writing specialist will help students with concerns such as analysis, substance, citation form, writing style, and research methods.

Phone: 919-530-6427
Email: Courtney.Bryant@nccu.edu

Shirley E. Faulkner-Springfield, Ph.D., Writing Specialist
The writing specialist will help students with issues such as organization, development, audience awareness, grammar, word choice, punctuation, and mechanics.

Phone: 919-530-5483
Email: sfaulkner@nccu.edu

Schedule an Appointment
Appointments can be made by accessing the Conference Sign-up Sheet in TWEN, selecting Legal Writing Specialist or Writing Specialist, and following the instructions for scheduling conferences.

Legal Writing Center Sign-In Form
Complete the Legal Writing Center Sign-In Form if you do not have an appointment with a writing specialist but would like to use the Center for other reasons.