Short And Sweet: Compliment From Professor

Have been getting more positive comments from professors, and I thought I’d share this one:

“Outstanding! Your memo was complete yet not wordy! And you based your reasoning on three strong Illinois cases…well done! I would just trim away all the secondary sources (the textbooks, law firm websites, etc.). What is typical is to include the cites where you have listed the case names (i.e., in the body of the memo) rather than at the end. Listing them at the end is more like APA style, which the legal field does not follow, except when writing articles for legal magazines. And, you don’t need to include sources you’ve used for background material at all unless you are quoting from or paraphrasing information from them. But, as I say, the body of the memo is crisp and powerful. Fantastic!”

I feel like I’m bumbling around in the dark most of the time, and am never certain I’ve done well, so this feels good to read.

I got docked some points for completing an assignment and then (stupidly, as it turns out) pasting it into a Memo format, which was a rookie error, but that’s the only assignment I haven’t gotten full marks on so far. I misread the assignment guidelines, so it was my fault entirely. I did wonder why we were doing a matrioshka doll kind of layered assignment, so even my gut was warning me it wasn’t what was wanted.