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David I. C. Thomson, LP Professor and Director

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	Recent Updates My book, Law School 2.0: Legal Education for a Digital Age was published in January. More information about the book can be found here. I gave a presentation in Indianapolis in July at the 2008 biennial conference of the Legal Writing Institute about teaching legal writing online. My presentation, with the slides in several formats and supporting resources, can be found here. I gave a presentation in New York about laptops in the classroom at the 2008 American Association of Law Schools meeting; it was part of a debate about whether they should be banned. An overview of my contribution to this program, together with the slides, can be found here. I have created a new page that contains links to all my student evaluations since I started teaching full time at DU. You will find it here.

These are questions I am often asked. Thought I don't mind answering them again, I thought it might be helpful to put some of them here, and the answers I give to those questions. If you have a question that you think should be included here, by all means send it to me via E-mail and I will answer it here for everyone's benefit.

Can I hand in my assignment late?
Generally, no. With rare exceptions for real, serious problems, I will accept a written assignment one day late. But you must discuss it with me before the deadline. And you will suffer a penalty on the final grade.

Yes, this is a strict policy. But Courts are not lenient either. An important part of learning legal writing is learning to start earlier, and be ready with a near final draft a day or two in advance. If you do those things, you will rarely miss a filing deadline.

Which assignments do we have to include in our Portfolios?
All of them. Think of the Portfolio as your file for the case at the end of each semester. Lawyers need to learn to keep good files, and this is a good place to start. Also, you will find at the end of the semester, when you look over the progress of your work, you will be amazed at how much you have learned.

How do I read the PowerPoint presentations on the TWEN site?
If you download them to your computer, and you have PowerPoint installed, just opening the file will let you open the presentation and view it in PowerPoint. Note that some of the presentations have "notes" at the bottom of each slide. These help you remember what I said as I ran through the slides. You can see the notes by selecting that view in PowerPoint, or by printing the notes pages themselves (which is an option on the print menu).

If you don't have PowerPoint, you need to download the PowerPoint viewer. You can find one on the Microsoft site, or on our TWEN classroom site, or from this link.

I lost the handout from one of your classes. Can I get another copy?
Of course! Just ask me for it (with some specificity) in an E-mail, and I will either E-mail the file to you (if I have it in electronic format), or I will bring it to you at our next class.