academic essay writing, rubric law day writing

Rubric for Law Day Contest

                                        by Angela Townsend
 
 
 
 
            Criteria             Participant      Serious Competitor               Winner!!!
Thought
  • Not original, regurgitative, and thus sometimes nonsensical
  • Original, true
  • Original, profound, provocative, true to observable facts
Fluency
  • Awkward Word Flow
  • Adequate Fluency
  • Exemplary in fluency of ideas and expression
 Word length requirement
  • 50 or more than 250
  • 175 to 200
  • 225-250 words, no more
Audience
  • No sense that judges and lawyers are the audience for your ideas.  Justice system bashers or attorney bashers
  • An awareness that judges and lawyers are going to be the listeners, or they may be the judges of the writing
  • A keen awareness of the audience.  Uses buzz words that are especially appealing to the legal profession
Diction or Word Choice
  • Poor choice of words for the expression of ideas for this contest
  • Accurate and adequate choice of words scattered a appropriately within the essay
  • Rich, engaging, legally-oriented terminology accurately used.

Note:  Of course, the correct use of grammar, spelling, capitalization and punctuation are as important as always.  Such errors should be remedied.
 

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