Orientation ’08 William Mitchell College of Law

Core Courses

It's Homework Time!

Required Reading

» Kelley Case Materials

Please review these materials before and bring them with you to Orientation on Monday.

To prepare for your first WRAP (Writing & Representation: Advice & Persuasion) class meeting during Orientation on Monday, August 18, you will need to read the Kelley Case Materials. Please be ready to discuss the decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court in the case of Heller v. American Range Corp. A copy of the statute involved in that case, the case itself, and a case brief (our notes on the case) are all included in the Kelley Case Materials.

To help you see how we got from the case itself to the case brief, we have also included an exhibit from one of your texts (Synthesis: Legal Reading, Reasoning, and Writing). On the left of Exhibit 3.4 are questions you should ask yourself as you read a case. Some of these questions are about the events between the parties to the case (what lawyers call “real-world facts”); other questions are about the courts’ responses to those events. Once you have discerned the answers to these questions, you are ready to write your brief. The right column of Exhibit 3.4 matches the left-column questions with components typically found in case briefs. For example, the answer to “what happened between the parties?” appears in the facts component of the case brief.

Please read these materials carefully before Orientation, and bring them with you. You may want to write some notes in the margins of the case, noting for each portion of text which question it answers and to which component of the case brief it pertains.

We look forward to welcoming you in person soon.

Professor Mehmet Konar-Steenberg
Professor Deborah Schmedemann
Coordinators, Writing & Representation: Advice & Persuasion (WRAP) course