MPT Notes

 File- Law Office material

o Memorandum (Task Memo) from Supervising Attorney
o Letters, Transcripts of clients, interviews, or other documents
 Library- Legal Material
o Cases, hornbook material, statutes, rules, newspaper articles, and any other source
in which a lawyer might find legal principles, and explanations of legal principles,
to use in completing the task
 Task
o Brief, Memo, Letter to a client or another attorney, a cause of action for
submission to a court, a persuasive memorandum, or a brief, a contract provision,
a will, a proposal for settlement, a closing argument, or any other task.
 Rule of 3- three parts to memo or brief.
o Legal Memorandum
 Introduction, Discussion, Conclusion
o Legal Brief
 Issues or Summary, Argument, Conclusion
 In the File and Library
o Read Statutes before the cases
o If there are elements, number them.
o Survey the cases.
o Note which jurisdictions the cases come from, which courts decided them, and
when.
o Is the case Mandatory or Persuasive authority?
 Courts
o The trial court of general jurisdiction is the District Court.
o The intermediate appellate court is the Court of Appeals
o The highest court is the Supreme Court
o Fifteenth Circuit of the United States, State of Franklin
 Cases
o Decisions of courts in other states, of federal courts applying states statues of
other states, and of lower courts on the same level in the same state, can be
Persuasive, but NOT Mandatory.
o A federal or state court may choose to employ a decision as persuasive for any of
a number of reasons.
o If you have 2 cases that were decided by courts are the same level, read the earlier
case first and then read the later case.
 This allows you to see what the general law is and how subsequent cases
have interpreted or modified the law.
o Check if the case has been overruled.
 Incase the case is no longer good law.
 Ethical Considerations
o Relationship between attorney and client, attorney and opposing counsel, prior
representation of parties in similar cases, our interest in fee disputes and in the
interest at stake in the suit.
o MPT may also provide means for avoiding it or finding a remedy in the form of a
statutory exception that alleviates a possible conflict of interest.
o Make sure to notice if the task mentions an ethical question. If so, take special
care to spell out in detail how it will affect your work in aiding the client.
o It is important to state clearly, in a separately- labeled section, that there is a
possible ethical issue. Explain what the issue is. Use the word “ethical”. Make it
unmistakably clear that you know you are confronting an ethical issue.
o Discuss how the issue could be handled, suggesting what type of disclosure or
other resolution is available.
o Attorney’s obligation to the Court, Accuracy in both law and the facts are ethical
issues. The attorney must disclose adverse authority, clearly indicating any
holdings that are against his position. He or she must also present that adverse
authority, neither minimizing its applicability nor over-stating it.