After grading many, many assignments by college students this week

[Ms. Toad]

64. That's small potatoes, compared to what I'm seeing.

mostly I'm telling them to keep themselves out of their writing (so the I/me question shouldn't come up). As to paragraphs - right now I'm battling wall-o-words. Paragraphs that run more than a page long.

I don't touch on client letters much.

I'm OK with one-sentence paragraphs for certain purposes (for emphasis, for example).

My focus (as to paragraph length) is to make their work visually easy to read - which means fewer than 10 -15 lines before a break. When they hit about 10 lines I suggest they think of a logical place to break and insert a blank line. The eyes get pretty tired about that time and don't track from the right of the text back to the left. (Although similar tracking problems are created when every paragraph is a single sentence - or worse, a singel line.)

That said, there is a different structure for legal analysis. It is logically similar to the paragraph structure you learned, but the breaks are more for readability, or to separate logical chunks of analysis. The paragraphs in legaly writing don't necessarily reach a concluding sentence before moving on a new paragraph, and paragraphs don't necessarily begin with a new topic sentence.

If you think of standard paragraph structure you are used to (topic sentence, supporting sentences, concluding sentence) requires several paragraphs in legal writing. There are many variations, but one of tme most common is Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion. The issue is equivalent to the topic sentence - and often is a stand-alone sentence. It is a question that you answer in the middle paragraphs (which are logically equivalent to supporting sentences.

Rules are one equivlaent to a supporting sentence. They are typicaly a separate paragraph (without a topic sentence or a conclusion, because the point is just to set out (for your professor, the court, opposing counsel) the rules on which you are relying. The analysis is a second part that is equivalent to a supporting sentence. It will typically comprise one (or more) sets of what might feel to you like incomplete paragraphs. They apply the rules to the facts - those paragraphs should include a conclusion as to some small component of the rule that is analyzed therein, but typically don't include anything equivalent to a topic sentence.

Once you get to the final conclusion it , like the issue statement, is often a single sentence paragraph. It can be combined with a preceding analytical paragraph - but it is often clearer (especially with the application of multiple rules) if it is in a paragraph all by itself.