XXI. WRITING A SEMINAR TEMR PAPERSA

XXI. WRITING A SEMINAR TEMR PAPERS

A. Introduction: Comparing Seminar Term Papers and Academic Articles
Seminar term papers are often much like law review articles, though the rules vary from instructor to instructor.
1. Nonobviousness
Seminar term papers should be nonobvious. Your goal is to impress the professor with your smarts and your creative thinking. Papers that apply settled law or well-established arguments to slightly new fact patterns generally won't serve this goal, and won't get a good grade.

2. Soundness
Seminar term papers shold of course; and your instructor, who specializes in the seminar topic, wil be a much more critical judge of the quality of your arguments than a casual reader of an article would be.

3. Writing and structure
Seminar term papers should be well-written and well-organized. True, you have a captive audience, and needn't worry that a boring introduction will lose the reader. But most instructors see the seminar paper as a way of teaching you how to write better, and they will therefore prefer that your paper be as engaging as possible. Likewise, though some professors might let you omit some sections -such as the discussion of the background legal rules--others might see the paper as an opportunity for you to practice writing sections like this, and will therefore insist that they be done well.
4. Utility

Utility may be less necessary, depending on what your professor prefers. A5 Part I.E pointed out, utility is relative: The goal is to make the work as useful as possible given your area of interest. Not every work needs to appeal to thousands of lawyers, but once you choose a topic, you should do what it takes to make your work appeal to as many readers as possible.
In a seminar paper, the instructor may relax this constraint, since the work will have exactly one reader. Still, some instructors may insist on utility even there, because they want you to use this opportunity to learn the skill of making articles more useful.
5. Novelty

Novelty may also be less necessary, depending on what your professor prefers. Because the paper isn't meant to be published, your teacher might conclude that your paper doesn't have to say something that's genuinely new to those who work in the field. It may be enough that it say something that is new to you, and that shows that you've thought about the matter yourself.
Many instructors, though, prefer that seminar papers be novel. First, seminars are supposed to teach you to think creatively and originally-to come up with ideas that others haven't had.
Second, if your paper does say something that someone else has already said, the instructor might suspect that you didn't really do that much work on it yourself, but just relied, consciously or not, on the arguments of others. He might not think you were plagiarizing; you might have properly given credit to people, and cast everything in your own words. But he might feel that your work may not have involved as much hard thinking as a more novel proposal would require.
Finally, novel work is just more impressive-it better shows off your abilities. Even people who say they don't require novelty will often value a novel paper (all other things being equal) more than a paper that says what many others have said before.

B. Figuring Out What Your Instructor Expects
As you see, while most seminar papers have the same general requirements, different instructors do things differently. Your first task, then, is to ask about what your instructor expects. Does the instructor want the work to be novel (again, in the sense of novel to scholars, as opposed to just novel to you)? Does the instructor expect it to summarize the background legal principles, as well as setting forth a new proposal? Does the instructor prefer that you spend more time describing the law (to show that you've learned the subject matter well), instead of setting forth any suggested changes? Will the instructor give more credit for a topic that's designed to be as useful as possible to its fictional readers?
Many instructors will quickly give you and your classmates clear guidance on this. A few, though, might not have thought fully about the matter, which is why asking them for specifics can be
helpful. .
You're writing for an audience of one. Start by figuring out what that one person expects.
C. Finding a Topic
Topics for seminar papers are generally limited to the seminar's subject matter. Sometimes this limitation can be helpful: I suspect that many students struggle a long time to find a topic for a publishable article precisely because there are so many fields to choose from.
Here are a few ways you could find a topic.
1. Ask the teacher
Ask your professor to recommend some possible topics. Some teachers don't like to provide paper topics, since they think that finding a topic is part of the student's task; but others are more accommodating. Professors usually teach seminars in subjects that they like, that they write about, and that they read about. They therefore often have many topic ideas.
2. Pay attention to the readings
In most seminars, you end up reading recent academic papers. See what topics are flagged as unresolved by the readings, or are glossed over with only a shallow analysis. Don't frame your paper as a response to the particular article (see Part U.S, p. 37) unless your instructor tells you that this is fine. Organize it instead around the issue that you've identified from the readings.
3. Pay attention to the discussions
Listen carefully during class discussions. If classmates are debating a particular question and you see there's no clear answer, the question might be worth exploring further. Check with the instructor when you've identified such a topic, since you might end up using some insights that were first raised by classmates; but generally the instructor won't mind, because your written analysis of the subject will require vastly more thinking than the classmates' off-the-cuff statements did.
4. Pay attention to the news
Many seminar readings and class discussions mention recent events, which often contain the seed of an interesting article. What's more, immersing yourself in the class can lead you to notice interesting events in the news, or remember events that you heard about a few months before.
Don't feel constrained by the circumstances of a particular event, which may raise only a very narrow question, or have some unusual aspects. Use the event as a concrete example that helps you identify and confront a broader problem.
D. Budgeting Your Time
Students often have less time to write a seminar paper than a student article. Student article topics, and especially law review Note topics, tend to be chosen during the summer or at the start of the semester. In a seminar, though, you may have to wait until mid-semester, after you've gotten into the material and perhaps gained a better sense of what you want to write about.
This makes it especially important to manage your time wisely. You need to have the time to select a topic, do your research, write several drafts, and (if the instructor allows it) have your instructor read and comment on at least one draft. So look at the timeline on pp. 104-104, adjust it to your seminar's timetable, and stick to it.
E. Turning the Paper into a Publishable Article
Once you've written a seminar term paper, publish it. You've done the work; why not get an extra credential out of it?
Don't worry if you aren't on law review. If your paper is any good, you can get it published in some outside journal (see Part XXII I. A, p. 261). You might not get into the top law reviews, but a publication in a specialty journal or a second-tier journal is better than no publication.
You'll probably need to do some extra work to make the paper publishable. For instance, if your instructor let you skip explaining the legal background, you might need to fill in that section. But generally this isn't hard, since you've already thought through the problem, done the research, and written the paper. Even a law firm memo can be turned into a law review article (see Part XX), though the two are very different genres. A seminar paper is much closer to an article already.
Obviously, if you're planning to do this, ask your professor for advice: He might have suggestions that he never mentioned when the discussion was focused only on your writing a student paper. Better still, if you plan from the beginning to turn the seminar paper into an article, talk to your professor about this up front. He may have ideas about your choice of a claim and your organization that he won't bring up unless he thinks about the paper eventually becoming publishable.