After completing the first year legal writing course, every student at Brooklyn Law School must successfully complete, prior to graduation, an upperclass writing requirement consisting of significant supervised research and writing. The goals of the upperclass writing requirement are to provide each student with: 1) a significant research experience; 2) an opportunity for in-depth study and analysis (involving sustained reflection) of a particular area of the law; 3) an opportunity to articulate his or her own ideas and evaluation of the law; and 4) a faculty supervised writing experience involving at least one re-write of a substantial piece of the student’s writing. All four of these goals must be met for a project or projects to satisfy the upperclass writing requirement.

For the writing to satisfy the upperclass writing requirement, it must be on the level of serious work of a serious attorney and must receive at least a grade of “C”. One essential requirement is that the student be required to re-write the paper or papers after having received comments from the faculty member to whom it was submitted. Additional re-writes may also be required. The student must be graded not only on the final product but on the first draft submitted (at least 25% of the final paper grade).

If a project is to be supervised by an adjunct faculty member, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs must approve the project, by determining that the goals set forth herein will be met.

The upperclass writing requirement may be satisfied in any of the following ways:

1. An article, note or comment published in any of the three student edited journals;
2. An unpublished article, note or comment written by a member of the three student edited journals which has been approved by the editor-in-chief and faculty advisor for this purpose;
3. The written product of a faculty supervised independent research project*;
4. A paper of sufficient depth and length submitted in a course or seminar;
5. An appellate brief submitted in connection with a Moot Court competition, Appellate Advocacy, or other similar project for which credit has been awarded, provided that the student is one of the principal authors of the final written product*;
6. An essay or major written work submitted to an extramural writing competition which has been reviewed and approved for upperclass writing requirement credit by a faculty member*;
7. An upperclass writing course in which the student writes one major paper*;
8. An upperclass writing course in which the student writes several smaller papers, but which is designed to satisfy the goals of the upperclass writing requirement and which has been approved for this purpose by the Director of Legal Writing;
9. A significant written work, produced substantially by the individual student in a professional skills course, which has been reviewed by the faculty member who certifies that is satisfies the goals of the upperclass writing requirement*.

* A student who seeks to satisfy the upperclass writing requirement through a course or independent study that requires only one major written work product will usually be expected to submit a well-written and researched, analytical paper or brief of at least 15 to 20 pages, excluding footnotes.