Mastering the skills of judgment writing

Note: This program was cancelled due to the pandemic and will return in 2022.

Overview

Mastering the Skill of Judgment Writing - presented jointly by the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice and the National Judicial Institute - is an intensive program that will help judges take their judicial writing skills to an advanced level. The sessions feature extensive small-group work and individualized feedback on writing problems from experienced judicial faculty and experts on judicial writing.

Objectives

Why is this training important?

• Align the judgment’s structure with the judge's view of the case’s issues;
• Improve the ability to communicate with multiple and complex audiences;
• Communicate the decision and reasoning more efficiently and comprehensibly;
• Improve professional writing skills, from drafting and organizing to revising and editing.

After participating in this course, judges will demonstrate increased confidence in writing judgments that meet the needs of audience(s).

Judges will be better able to:
• Identify the issues clearly and use them to make conscious choices about structure, based upon issue-driven structure;
• Develop an effective introduction that identifies the issues and provides a map to the structure of the judgment;
• Provide context before details to increase clarity for the audience.