Peer Tutoring Program

The Law School's tutoring service is open to JD students at no cost to them. Tutors are fellow students who have a track record of academic excellence and have demonstrated a commitment to helping others learn. Once assigned, students individually arrange to meet with their tutor at mutually convenient times. Typically these meetings occur once or twice a week for an hour or two.

Tutors for upper level classes and seminars may be available, depending on course offerings in previous academic years. Tutors are not available, however, for practice simulations, workshops, and clinics.

If you would like to request a tutor or apply to be one, contact Professor Patrick Barry (barrypj@umich.edu), the Director of Academic and Writing Support. You can also come to the many free workshops he and the current group of tutors will be putting on this semester. Examples of these workshops include:

Writing Better Sentences: Edit Hour [once a week, on mondays]

Becoming a better editor is one of the keys to becoming a better writer, which is one of the keys to becoming a better lawyer. This weekly series will give you a chance to practice your editing skills with Professor Patrick Barry and a  team of excellent 2L and 3L editors.

Feel free to bring your own lunch. Light snacks will also be provided. [The room for this workshop may vary, so be sure to check the Law School's event page for more details.]

Writing Better Sentences: Faculty Briefs

A short lesson on writing from Professor Patrick Barry, and a discussion with Professors Vivek Sankaran and Josh Kay about their winning appellate brief in In Re Sanders (2015), a case that fundamentally changed child welfare law in the state of Michigan--for the better. 

Writing Better sentences: new students [once a week, on fridays]

There is not always time for sentence-level writing instruction in your standard law school classes, so a special multi-week workshop has been created for all incoming students--meaning all 1Ls, transfers, and LLMs. This workshop will cover, among other things, how to manage information flow from the beginning of a sentence to the end of a sentence, how to use various editing strategies to eliminate unnecessary words and phrases from every part of a sentence, and how punctuation, when properly employed, can be an effective tool of persuasion.

We won't be able to address every writing issue law students typically have, but we will be able to address some of the most important, while at the same time giving you a vocabulary you can use, on your own, to continue to improve as writers throughout your law school career and after you graduate. If we can make you better writers, the idea is, we can make you better lawyers. There is a direct relationship between those two skills. 

Light snacks will be served. Please note that the room for this workshop may vary, so be sure to check the Law School's event page for more details.