North Carolina Court of Appeals Judge Allegra Collins is a favorite of High Point Law students. During a recent in-person interaction with first-year research and writing students, she emphasized the importance of the principles learned in a law school’s legal writing program. These principles, she explained, apply throughout a lawyer’s career. Judge Collins remarked that she routinely discusses with her law clerks the critical nature of techniques such as case illustrations, an essential component of analogical reasoning that she grappled with as a first-year law student.
“Clarity, consistency, and concision,” Judge Collins emphasized, are the watchwords that guide the best legal writing — whether composed in law school, in legal practice, or from the bench. Focusing on those basics will develop career-long skills for the legal practitioner. She advised the students to develop their writing muscles by frequently reading and writing and, along the way, exercising best efforts to avoid making the same mistake twice.
In response to a question posed by Peter Nemerovski, Associate Professor of Law and Director of Advocacy, Judge Collins affirmed that lawyers’ persuasive techniques affect even seasoned legal readers such as appellate judges. Those techniques “absolutely work,” she said, commenting that as a jurist she strives to write her opinions in the persona of a “neutral persuasive writer” dedicated to explaining to the reader why the judicial opinion is a reasoned and accurate decision. Judges persuade, she says, and the best advocates leverage rhetorical tools even more. Effective legal writing delivers results.
Reflecting on her own journey in the law, which includes serving for over seven years on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, Judge Collins told the students that among the “most important people [in their careers will be] the people sitting next to you.” Their law school classmates, she explained, will play critical roles in their professional and personal lives, helping one another secure jobs, referring cases, and bearing witness to the evolution of their careers.
Commenting on Judge Collins’s visit, Professor Nemerovski remarked: “It was a pleasure to welcome Judge Collins to HPU Law for the second year in a row. Her insights on legal writing reinforced and supplemented what our students are learning in Legal Research & Writing. Our students are excited to put the judge’s advice into practice.”
Law Dean Mark Martin added:
“We so value Judge Collins’s kindness in meeting with our students. Her comments align perfectly with the high value we place on our legal research and writing course, a course that our students gave a near-perfect evaluation.”