Hot Bench: Joe Fore '11
Hi Professor Fore! Thanks for taking the time to meet with me today. I know you are preparing to read all of our memos, so I will do my best to be quick. I guess we can get started with a little introduction. Where are you from, how long have you been at UVA, and what classes do you teach?
I grew up in Orlando, Florida. I’ve been here since 2015, and I teach Legal Research and Writing and a seminar on ethical values—a course on stoicism.
What inspired you to transition from practicing to teaching, and what drew you to LRW specifically?
I really enjoyed the craft of writing, it was my favorite part of being a lawyer and practicing. Structuring arguments, making arguments, using cases and other authorities to build an argument. I wanted to teach that to students, help them develop their own style, their own methods of writing, and that's why I specifically like teaching Legal Research and Writing. Also, I think it's great to be able to work with first-year students in particular. To help them think about the kind of lawyer they want to be, not just in terms of the mechanics and the tasks, but also in terms of professional and ethical identities and how they want to interact with clients and colleagues. So I view my job a little more broadly than just the mechanics of writing. We're doing more of the real work of lawyering, so we get to infuse our lessons with more professional identity questions.
Speaking of building professional identity, what is one piece of advice you would give to law students?
I think it would be that you have to handle every task that you do with care and with precision, even what seem to be the smallest or the most mundane tasks, because you never know what thing will make a difference in a case, dealing with a client, or in your own career. Making sure that everything is done with care will ensure that you give yourself the best chance possible to succeed. Not treating anything as something that can be overlooked or is small, every task needs to be something that you give your attention and your care.
On that note, what is one legal writing mistake, or just a writing mistake in general, that bothers you the most?
In legal writing, specifically, when people don't preview the outcome of their analysis or their decisions. Judicial opinions, for example, that don't start out by telling you who wins. They say, you know, this case presents an interesting question, but they don't actually tell you which way they're resolving it. When legal writers don't tell you right up front what their key point is, or their key conclusion is, they keep you guessing. That's not a fun spot to be in as a reader.
I know we touched on this in class a little bit and , you've spoken about it, but for everybody else, what effect do you think that AI will have on legal research and writing and lawyering in general, if any?
I don't think it's quite as revolutionary of a change as people think. I think it largely is just a more efficient way of doing some of the things that we've already been doing. When I was in law school, we had to do a lot more of the terms and connector searching. You had to build those searches more carefully, because you had to tell the programs how to do their searches. And now the AI is basically doing that job for you. So you're just interfacing with the computer in a different way, but you're still achieving the same thing. The algorithm is just collating that information. It's just making it a more efficient way of gathering up and formatting that information. So I think that's probably the biggest use of AI, in terms of writing and research. I will say there probably are, and I'm not as well versed in this, a lot more uses in things like discovery, or document review, where AI can help in identifying or locating documents more efficiently. I just don't interact with those as much because those are more in the private space, like proprietary systems. But in terms of just legal research and writing tasks, it's just doing the job a little quicker, and I think for your generation of law students and new lawyers, it'll just become part of how you interact with the computer.
Okay, we’re going to pivot to lightning round. What's your favorite part about living in Charlottesville?
Nature, proximity to nature.
Lexis or Westlaw?
Westlaw, usually.
What's your favorite holiday?
Thanksgiving. I do most of the cooking for Thanksgiving, and I really enjoy that.
Do you have any pets?
Yes, I have one cat. He's a middle-aged male cat.
What was the first job you ever had?
I was a grocery bagger at Publix in Florida.
And are you reading or watching anything right now?
I've been reading a series of Sci-Fi novels called the Hyperion series, by a guy named Dan Simmons. I think I got through the first three books, and there's one more. I don't usually read Sci-Fi, but I've been reading that.
What was your favorite class you took when you were at UVA (other than LRW, obviously)?
Probably Constitutional Law with Fred Schauer, who just passed away. Having Con Law with Fred Schauer was amazing. He was just a mountain of a person, an incredible mind, very generous, thoughtful, and so deeply knowledgeable. Also, Criminal Investigations with Professor Coughlin. I never practiced criminal law, but just understanding the concepts I thought was super valuable. Those were both great classes that I look back on very fondly. Although you can make a note, I had so many, it's very hard to choose. So many of my former professors and now colleagues were just great.
