Meredith Geller (Northern Illinois), ‘Yo, Prof!’ is Not the Proper Way to Address Me: Using a Status Email Assignment in First-Year Legal Writing to Address Issues with Student Correspondence: 

This article summarizes the status email assignment used in a first year legal writing class in order to help students with professional writing.  

As academic success professionals, we are used to focusing on student issues with legal analysis and understanding complex legal concepts. However, often our students need help with the more mundane. One such mundane issue gave rise to a status email assignment that incorporates basic professional communication skills into the 1L Legal Writing course.

My colleagues and I have often lamented the informal nature of some students’ emails, as I’m sure many reading this have as well. However, a few years ago we realized that the problems we were seeing were no longer limited to a rare few students. Instead, this problem was demonstrated throughout the class, regardless of the student’s ability as a legal writer or overall academic performance. …

Having now done the status email assignment for several years, although we have not done research to confirm the effect this assignment has on student correspondence, anecdotally it works quite well. Once the email etiquette discussion occurs, students pay far more attention to their emails and my colleagues and I have noticed an increase in professionalism in even the most basic correspondence. Also, when there are issues with a student’s email, the email etiquette discussion gives a context to discuss those issues in a way that does not offend the students. I will miss the funny email addresses, though.

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