Analytical Paper Required:Per the specification of the writing group, all enrolled students complete a research paper of one credit (at least 20-25 pages) or two credits (50 or more pages), with faculty and peer review of a substantially complete draft. This paper can be used to satisfy the analytical paper requirement for J.D. students.

Students enrolling in a writing group are required to submit a signed Writing Group Registration Form to the Registrar’s Office.

Writing is a terribly important skill; no matter what you do after graduating, you’ll have to write a lot. I think the best way to get better at writing—besides reading things you love—is to practice writing. This group is structured around giving you lots of opportunities to write and receive feedback on your writing.

I also want to encourage you to think about how change happens. I imagine that most of you came to law school to learn how to solve problems that are harming people you care about. I imagine most of your classes have offered you the same general theory for how to solve those problems: litigation. Litigation is an extremely important theory of change. But it isn’t the only one: far more problems have been solved through legislating, mobilizing, negotiating, organizing, voting, and other methods of disrupting existing institutions and relationships. The one substantive requirement of this writing group is that you may not write about changes in legal doctrine; you must write about (literally) any other kind of change. In the past few years, students have written about:

1. How organizers for women’s suffrage in Massachusetts responded to a referendum defeat in 1915 only to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
2. How the author helped to unionize his workplace.
3. A critique of an organization structured around prefigurative politics.
4. Why so many graduates of law schools become novelists.
5. How Illinois voters adopted a constitutional amendment to protect workers’ rights in 2022.
6. How participants in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran were using art to change their relationship to the Iranian diaspora from 2022–24.
7. How a Hispanic candidate in rural North Carolina helped convince voters to elect him to the statehouse in 2020.
8. Why the desegregation of public schools appeared more peaceful in 1960s Atlanta compared to New Orleans.
9. How neighbors in rural Louisiana formed an environmental-rights organization to fend off a new petrochemical plant in 2019.

In the fall, we’ll meet once a month between September and December 2025. Each month, I’ll ask you to write a short piece that will take the form of a blog post, an oped, or a personal essay. Each piece can be about any topic you want that offers an example of how change happens. In the spring, I’ll ask you to write a single paper of 20–50 double-spaced pages that takes the format of a law review article, long-form journalism, a strategic plan, or a memoir. You won’t need to pick a topic for that until the winter.

The writing group will be selected by lottery on May 17, 2025. To enter the lottery, please email Caitlin DeVine (cdevine@law.harvard.edu) with your name and interest in the writing group.