CAP Law Blog

Save the Date! Webinar – April 17 (12:30pm ET)

Event Details

When: April 17, 2023 at 12:30 pm ET

Where: Zoom (join from anywhere)

Hosts: Professor Eric Voigt, Professor Robin Boyle-Laisure, and Professor Alexa Z. Chew.

Topic: The authors’ CAP texts and their Core Knowledge for Lawyers (CKL) companion materials created to aid in achievement of student learning outcomes.

Registration: Please fill out this short form to RSVP. Zoom information will be provided via email.

Contact: Please email Krystal Norton at k.norton@caplaw.com with inquiries regarding this event.

Core Knowledge for Lawyers: An Overview

CKL is an online platform that houses author-written assessment content. The direct connection between the text, topics covered in class, and student engagement with material is honed by implementation of this platform when included as an element of course design. Content ranges from multiple choice questions and short essays to topic summaries and short videos. Authors select the type of assessments that work best with their text to support students and faculty.
 
CKL’s faculty dashboard, a component to be discussed in this webinar, provides invaluable insights for professors as they teach a course. Faculty can assess how students are handling certain topics and can ensure proper coverage and support with that data by adapting practice and lectures as necessary.
 
Access to CKL content is included in the price of new book purchases. When students buy a used book, a separate purchase can be made for CKL access. Ebook purchases also include access when bought from partnering platforms, including Kindle, Redshelf, Vitalsource, and Perusall.
 
A live demonstration of the CKL platform will occur during the webinar. You can create an account and request preview access at coreknowledgeforlawyers.com. 
 

Learn More About Your Hosts and Their Work

Eric Voigt (Faulkner University Jones School of Law)

Eric Voigt is the author of CAP’s “Legal Research Demystified” course book. Currently in its second edition, the book masterfully guides law students through eight steps to research common law issues and ten steps to research statutory issues. Visual aids, screen captures, checklists, and tables are included throughout to engage students and help them “do” legal research rather than “hear” about legal research. Professors have appreciated that the book takes students out of a vacuum and assists them in navigating legal research for law school and in practice.
 
Professor Voigt has created legal research review questions and practical exercises within the Core Knowledge for Lawyers platform. The CKL content aligns with the book’s approach and substantive coverage. In total, there are almost 200 auto-grading questions from the end of each chapter and hundreds of interactive questions and explanations that walk students through the steps for researching common law and statutory issues on Westlaw and Lexis+.
 
You can learn more about author Eric Voigt here.
 
You can read reviews of “Legal Research Demystified,” view a short video from the author, explore the text’s Table of Contents, and make book purchases or request review copies here.
 

Robin Boyle-Laisure (St. John’s University School of Law)

Robin Boyle-Laisure authors “Becoming a Legal Writer: A Workbook with Explanations to Develop Objective Legal Analysis and Writing Skills” for Carolina Academic Press. This innovative workbook aims to teach two different skills: objective legal analysis and legal writing. Whether as a supplement or main course text, this book pairs legal analysis and writing in a practical way. Students will learn fundamental lawyering skills such as formulating questions to ask clients upon intake, exploring research strategies into systems of law, developing critical reading skills for statutes and cases, briefing cases, extrapolating implicit and explicit rules, synthesizing rules, organizing and applying the law into objective written analysis, and polishing their writing.

Professor Boyle-Laisure’s text offers significant faculty support with a website specifically designed for the book. The online website acts as a Teacher’s Manual and provides resources for faculty. In addition, Professor Boyle-Laisure has created CKL content. Questions are paired with chapters from the book. Each set of questions has a brief introduction and questions specifically designed to focus on aspects of analysis and writing covered in the text. 

You can learn more about Robin Boyle-Laisure here.

You can read a review of “Becoming a Legal Writer,” explore the Table of Contents, and make book purchases or request review copies here. 

Alexa Z. Chew (UNC School of Law)

Alexa Z. Chew co-authors two CAP books with Katie Rose Guest Pryal that target legal writing and research for students at different stages in their legal writing journey. Professor Alexa Chew’s titles with CAP include “The Complete Legal Writer” and “The Complete Bar Writer.”

“The Complete Legal Writer,” a legal research and writing handbook, takes a novel approach: it uses genre discovery to teach students to guide themselves through the process of writing unfamiliar legal document types. Readers learn to write independently and to transfer their knowledge to upper-level classes and the workplace. The book also teaches research and citation literacy as integrated parts of the writing process. The book also offers a companion website with further information and support for faculty adopters at completelegalwriter.com. 

“The Complete Bar Writer” teaches readers how to prepare for the Multistate Performance Test and the Multistate Essay Exam (and similar bar performance tests and essay exams). Readers learn how to transfer the legal writing knowledge that they learned in law school to the bar exam, and how to build upon that foundation with skills specific to bar exam success. The book also fills gaps in readers’ knowledge by teaching legal writing, analysis, and reading—and how to do all of those things under pressure. These skills are useful lawyering skills that readers can use after test day. Resources and further information for this book are also available at completelegalwriter.com

Both books offer Core Knowledge for Lawyers content to help students affirm and practice the application of the knowledge and skills learned through the books and their coursework. Notably, the duality of these books generates consistency for students as they learn legal writing in school, for the bar, and beyond.

You can learn more about author Alexa Z. Chew here.

You can review the Table of Contents for these books and make purchases or request review copies here.

Krystal D. Norton, J.D.
Krystal D. Norton, J.D.
Krystal Norton is an acquisitions editor and instructional designer with Carolina Academic Press. Krystal graduated cum laude from Loyola New Orleans College of Law in 2013, and after acting as a law clerk at DOJ and trial attorney at DHS, she pursued a career in online legal education and publishing. Krystal has been an adjunct at Tulane University in their General Legal Studies Program since 2018 and she was named a Distinguished Faculty Member in 2022. Krystal teaches immigration law practice, legal research and writing, and other courses. She loves New Orleans, animals, art, and baseball!