Teach sentencing opinion writing

A favorite reader pointed me to this interesting article from the National Law Journal extolling the value of a law school course on writing judicial opinions.  Here is a snippet:

[F]ew lawyers have had occasion to reason through a legal problem, or grapple with a record, from a judge’s perspective.  Well-designed opinion-drafting exercises can help to fill this experiential gap and ground the development of an empathetic grasp of the choices and dilemmas that judges face. And this can lead to better advocacy.  For this reason, law schools might well consider making opinion-writing exercises part of the standard curriculum.  But, as more law schools are recognizing, the topic is large and important enough also to merit its own course…. [S]tudents particularly benefit from working on hard cases with messy records and uneven briefing.  In such cases, institutional and policy concerns … loom especially large.

Regular readers will not be surprised by my endorsement of more law school coursework focused on judicial decision-making, and also my interest in encouraging schools to recognize the special benefits of sentencing being the substantive focal point of such work.