The Architecture Behind Legal Arguments
How to Outline a Law Review Article (Part 3 of 6)
Legal scholarship demands both precision and vision, the ability to both dissect complex problems while imagining new possibilities.
In our first installment, we explored how to select meaningful topics for our law review articles and conduct preliminary research that lays the groundwork for our scholarly contribution.
Our second installment guided you through developing a compelling thesis and structural roadmap for your article, each of which are essential elements that give your article direction and purpose.
Now, we arrive at what many consider the foundation of persuasive legal writing: framing the legal problem itself, or what some oversimplify as the “background.” The way we frame legal problems determines not just how we solve them, but whether we recognize them as problems at all. When scholars reframe familiar legal terrain, they can transform entire fields of law.
Consider how employment discrimination scholarship was revolutionized when scholars reframed workplace inequality not as isolated instances of individual bias, but as structural patterns embedded in institutional practices. This reframing shifted both scholarly discourse and judicial approaches, demonstrating how problem framing shapes legal solutions.
But how do we develop frameworks that capture the full complexity of legal problems? How do we ensure our framing illuminates rather than obscures critical dimensions of the issues we study?
This third installment delves into techniques that transform a working thesis into a comprehensive framework that reveals the significance, complexity, and stakes of your legal issue. You’ll learn to map problems from multiple perspectives, craft context-rich “Act I” sections, and develop visual frameworks that guide readers through your analysis.
By mastering problem framing, you create the intellectual architecture that supports your entire argument, allowing readers to see familiar legal terrain through new eyes.
Let’s dive in!
From Thesis to Framework: Mastering Act I of the Three-Act Structure
In Motro’s three-act structure, Act I establishes the status quo and frames the problem in a way that creates tension and anticipation for your critique and solution in subsequent acts. The problem framing serves as the foundation upon which your entire argument will rest.
As you engage with the problem framing techniques outlined below, you may discover new dimensions that strengthen or refine your working thesis. This iterative process ensures your argument remains both focused and comprehensive. Your working thesis provides the intellectual backbone, but Act I builds the full skeletal structure that supports your analysis.
The Psychology of Problem Framing
Many scholars find themselves overwhelmed by the complexity of legal problems or stuck in research paralysis. Specific strategies can enhance your effectiveness during problem framing, which will inevitably speed up your writing:
Mind Mapping (15 minutes): Begin with your working thesis at the center of a blank page, then branch out to map different dimensions, perspectives, and implications of your legal problem. This visual approach helps surface connections that linear thinking might miss.
Free Writing (20 minutes): Set a timer and write continuously about your legal problem without editing or censoring. This technique often reveals intuitive insights about the problem’s significance and complexity.
Structured Questioning (10 minutes): Systematically work through multi-perspective questions, noting your initial responses without worrying about comprehensiveness.
These techniques create manageable entry points into complex legal issues, helping overcome the psychological barriers that often make problem framing challenging.
Before we go further, a quick reality check:
If you’ve ever felt like your career is being weighed down by setbacks or failures, you’re not alone. However, the failures we face—rejected publications, tough evaluations, or unfulfilled expectations—are not the end of the road. They are opportunities to find deeper purpose and resilience in our work.
At The Tenure Track, we help you transform these challenges into opportunities. We focus on more than just research and writing. We help you build a foundation that ensures your scholarship is meaningful, impactful, and engaging.
Ready to turn struggle into purpose? Subscribe to The Tenure Track for strategies to grow your scholarship, expand your network, and make a lasting impact.
The Art of the Introduction: Your Scholarly First Impression
The introduction to your law review article serves as both invitation and roadmap. The introduction is where you earn the right to be read. Yet many promising law review submissions falter because their introductions fail to clearly establish the significance of the legal problem or position the work within existing scholarly conversations.
Anatomy of a Law Review Introduction
Let’s dissect the elements of law review introductions by examining an abbreviated annotated example using our case study work-in-progress, Breaking the Machine:
[HOOK] In 1877, as railroad barons slashed wages during an economic depression while maintaining shareholder dividends, frustrated workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia didn’t file shareholder proposals or lobby for governance reforms. Instead, they seized control of the train yards and halted operations across multiple states. This “Great Railroad Strike” represented more than mere resistance to wage cuts. It was a fundamental rejection of the corporate governance structure itself.
[PROBLEM STATEMENT] Today’s corporate accountability crises likewise reflect failures of governance, not just management. Yet contemporary reform efforts like Senate Bill 21 (“SB 21”) address these systemic failures by merely adjusting the dials on a fundamentally flawed machine. This approach—what critical legal scholars call “reformist reforms”—tinkers with governance rules while preserving the underlying systems that generate corporate harm
[SCHOLARLY GAP] While corporate law scholarship has thoroughly examined incremental governance improvements, it has rarely engaged with the distinction between reformist reforms and non-reformist reforms in corporate governance—the distinctions between adjusting the corporate governance machine and breaking it entirely. Indeed, corporate governance literature typically avoids examining its subject through the lens of American labor history, which offers rich examples of direct action as responses to corporate governance failures
[SIGNIFICANCE] This oversight matters because reformist approaches to corporate governance have repeatedly failed to address fundamental power imbalances in capitalist markets. Each crisis yields new regulations and governance “best practices,” yet the core problems of corporate power persist while the harms caused by the corporate profit motive intensify. The limitations of SB 21 exemplify this pattern, revealing how governance reforms consistently fall short when they avoid restructuring corporate power relations.
[THESIS] This Article argues that SB 21 represents a quintessential reformist reform—tweaking corporate governance rules while maintaining the existing distribution of corporate power. Drawing on American labor’s tradition of direct economic action, it contends that effective corporate accountability requires moving beyond reformist adjustments to fundamentally reconstruct corporate governance systems. Just as railroad workers recognized that sabotage was sometimes required when formal channels failed, the corporate governance machine must be broken to create genuinely democratic economic institutions.
[ROADMAP] This Article proceeds in three parts. Part I delves under the hood of the corporate governance machine using the metaphor of a “four-stroke engine” of power, analyzing how SB 21 maintains rather than transforms this engine. Part II explores how American labor history offers alternative frameworks for understanding resistance to corporate power, contextualizing governance reform within broader struggles for economic democracy. Part III proposes specific non-reformist reforms that would fundamentally alter corporate power relationships, drawing lessons from historical examples of effective economic resistance.
[CONTRIBUTION] By reframing corporate governance through the lens of American labor’s direct action tradition, this Article offers both a critique of incremental reform approaches and a pathway toward more transformative changes. It contributes to emerging scholarship on economic democracy while providing practical guidance for policymakers seeking to move beyond the limitations of traditional corporate governance reforms.
This (albeit, bare bones) introduction for my working article idea, Breaking the Machine, exemplifies several important techniques:
1. The Hook
The introduction opens with the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, immediately grounding the theoretical discussion in concrete historical action. This hook serves multiple purposes:
Establishes the historical precedent for “breaking the machine” rather than reforming it
Creates an immediate contrast between direct action and incremental reform
Signals that the article will draw connections between labor history and corporate governance
Begins with narrative tension that captures reader interest
2. Problem Statement
After the hook, the introduction clearly identifies the specific legal problem:
Names a specific contemporary example (SB 21) as representative of the broader issue
Introduces the key theoretical framework (reformist vs. non-reformist reforms)
Establishes the metaphor of “adjusting dials on a flawed machine” that will run through the article
Creates a clear connection between the historical example and contemporary issues
3. Scholarly Gap
The introduction explicitly positions the work within existing scholarship:
Acknowledges existing corporate governance literature
Identifies two specific gaps: (1) insufficient engagement with reformist vs. non-reformist distinction and (2) limited connection to labor history
Suggests why these gaps matter to the field
Sets up the article’s interdisciplinary approach
4. Significance
This section articulates why the identified gap matters:
Points to the pattern of failed reforms to establish urgency
Connects the specific example (SB 21) to broader systemic issues
Emphasizes practical consequences of the identified problem
Appeals to both scholarly and practical concerns
5. Thesis Statement
The thesis provides a clear argumentative position:
Makes a specific claim about SB 21 (it’s a “reformist reform”)
Explicitly draws on the labor history framework established in the hook
Uses the “breaking the machine” metaphor to tie together theoretical and historical elements
Offers both critique (of reformist approaches) and alternative direction (non-reformist reforms)
Is specific, arguable, and significant
6. Roadmap
The roadmap clearly outlines the article’s structure:
Maintains the “engine” metaphor established earlier
Shows how the parts fit together into a coherent argument
Includes both descriptive/analytical (Parts I and II) and normative/prescriptive (Part III) components
Reinforces the interplay between corporate governance theory and labor history
7. Contribution
The conclusion articulates both theoretical and practical contributions:
Specifies contribution to scholarly discourse (reframing corporate governance)
Identifies relevance to emerging scholarly conversations (economic democracy)
Notes practical applications for policymakers
Reinforces the article’s transformative aims
This introduction establishes the article’s distinctive approach by connecting corporate governance to labor history, introducing the reformist/non-reformist framework, and maintaining the “breaking the machine” metaphor throughout. It sets up a clear problem, identifies gaps in existing literature, and promises both theoretical insights and practical guidance.
Moving Beyond Formula: Making Your Introduction Distinctive
While understanding the basic structure is essential, the most compelling introductions move beyond formula to establish a distinctive scholarly voice. The difference between a good introduction and a great one isn’t structure. It’s the ability to convey why your legal problem should keep readers awake at night.
Techniques for elevating your introduction include:
Concrete Illustrations: Open with a specific case, scenario, or legal dilemma that makes abstract legal concepts tangible.
Statistical Context: When appropriate, use data to demonstrate the scope or impact of the legal problem.
Historical Framing: Place contemporary legal issues in historical context to demonstrate evolving understandings.
Interdisciplinary Insights: Draw connections between legal problems and relevant insights from other disciplines.
Legal Problem Mapping: Approaching Issues from Multiple Angles
Before drafting your introduction, a comprehensive problem mapping exercise can help you identify multiple perspectives and dimensions of your legal issue. This approach ensures your framing is both nuanced and complete, and it will likely refine the working thesis you developed previously.
Multi-Perspective Mapping Framework
Effective legal problem mapping requires examining your issue through at least four distinct lenses:
1. Doctrinal Perspective
What is the current state of the law?
What inconsistencies, ambiguities, or gaps exist in the doctrine?
How have courts approached this issue differently across jurisdictions?
What tensions exist between different legal principles or lines of cases?
2. Theoretical Perspective
What normative frameworks help explain or critique the current approach?
What theoretical tensions underlie doctrinal disagreements?
How might different jurisprudential schools (textualism, originalism, living constitutionalism, etc.) approach this issue?
What assumptions about law’s purpose or function shape current approaches?
3. Empirical/Practical Perspective
How does the current legal approach work in practice?
What real-world impacts result from current doctrine?
How do primary, secondary, institutional, and outlier stakeholders experience the legal issue in real-world contexts?
What implementation challenges exist?
4. Critical Perspective
Whose viewpoints are privileged in current approaches?
Whose experiences are marginalized or invisible?
How do power dynamics shape the development of the law in this area?
What structural inequalities does the current approach reinforce or challenge?
Incorporating Critical Scholarship Approaches
Critical legal scholarship provides powerful tools for problem framing that challenges conventional assumptions and centers marginalized perspectives. The way we frame legal problems often determines whether certain forms of injustice remain invisible or become subjects of legal remedy.
Consider how these critical frameworks can reshape problem framing:
Critical Race Theory: Examines how racial hierarchies are embedded in seemingly neutral legal principles and institutions.
Feminist Legal Theory: Questions how gender assumptions shape legal doctrine and practice.
Intersectionality: Analyzes how different dimensions of identity interact to create unique forms of subordination not addressed by single-axis frameworks.
Critical Disability Studies: Challenges medical models of disability and examines how law constructs rather than merely responds to disability.
Law and Political Economy: Interrogates how law structures economic relationships and power dynamics.
For example, a traditional framing of employment discrimination law might focus on doctrinal tests and statutory interpretation. A critical framing might instead examine how seemingly neutral standards reflect and reinforce workplace power dynamics, or how intersectional discrimination falls through the cracks of single-category legal approaches.
Act I: Establishing Context and the Status Quo
Following Motro’s three-act framework, Act I typically includes these components:
Background/Context: Provides necessary factual, historical, or institutional context (length varies based on topic complexity)
The Status Quo and Its Rationale: Presents current legal approach and its strongest justifications
Let’s examine a preliminary bullet-point outline for an example Act I, returning to our case study work-in-progress article on corporate governance reform, Breaking the Machine:
ACT I: THE STATUS QUO AND ITS RATIONALE (WORKING TITLE: “THE MACHINE AT WORK”)
A. THE STATUS QUO DESCRIBED (WORKING TITLE: THE FOUR-STROKE ENGINE OF CORPORATE POWER)
Intake Stage (Working Title: Who Gets In?)
Corporate leadership pipelines are shaped by exclusion, with barriers to entry for historically marginalized groups
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives have attempted to address these issues but are under attack
Corporate law prioritizes elite credentialism, reinforcing homogeneity in boardrooms and executive suites
Compression Stage (Working Title: Who Holds Power?)
Corporate power is consolidated among executives and entrenched shareholders (private equity, hedge funds, institutional investors)
Delaware law enables shareholder primacy, but only for the most powerful shareholders, not retail investors or workers
Antitrust laws are weakly enforced, allowing monopolies to crush competition and suppress wages
Combustion Stage (Working Title: Who Benefits?)
The system is structured to maximize returns for corporate elites, not workers or communities
Stock buybacks and short-term profits are prioritized over long-term economic stability
Worker representation in governance is minimal, leaving labor with no seat at the table in major corporate decisions
Exhaust Stage (Working Title: Who Pays the Costs?)
Communities bear the social and environmental costs of corporate power (e.g., pollution, financial instability, job precarity)
The law shields corporations from accountability through weak enforcement and legal loopholes
Corporate failures (e.g., financial crises, mass layoffs) are often absorbed by the public, while executives walk away unscathed
B. RATIONALES FOR THE STATUS QUO (TITLE TBD)
Managerial Flexibility and Corporate Efficiency
The argument that strong board discretion leads to better corporate decision-making
The concern that excessive litigation and shareholder intervention disrupt corporate operations
Delaware’s Competitive Advantage
Delaware’s need to maintain its status as the premier corporate domicile
The balance between attracting businesses and upholding governance standards
C. AMERICAN TRADITIONS OF RESISTANCE TO CORPORATE POWER
Machine Breaking as Economic Resistance
The Great Railroad Strike (1877) where workers destroyed railroad property after wage cuts, showing that when corporate governance failed workers, direct action emerged
The Flint Sit-Down Strike (1936-37) where auto workers occupied GM factories, physically controlling the means of production to force corporate concessions
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) concept of “sabotage” as withdrawing efficiency to gain workplace control
Mining resistance in Appalachia, where coal miners destroyed equipment when companies prioritized profits over safety
The Corporate Response to Worker Resistance
How corporations used private security forces (Pinkertons) and state power to criminalize worker resistance
The legal evolution that protected corporate property while restricting worker action
How worker resistance was reframed as “anti-progress” rather than pro-democracy
Lessons from American Labor History
How direct action often achieved what legal reforms couldn’t
The pattern of corporate governance adjustments designed to prevent, not accommodate, worker power
The historical precedent of seeing corporate structures as systems that can be dismantled and rebuilt
This outline demonstrates several important principles:
Context Before Critique: The outline establishes historical and theoretical context, giving readers necessary background.
Fair Presentation: The “Rationales for the Status Quo” section presents the strongest arguments for current approaches, demonstrating intellectual honesty.
Organizational Logic: The structure follows a clear progression from general to specific, building toward the article’s central critique.
Metaphorical Framework: The “four-stroke engine” metaphor provides a unifying conceptual framework that makes complex corporate governance concepts more accessible.
Building on our “Breaking the Machine” case study, this outline shows how problem framing techniques enhance the four-stroke engine metaphor while incorporating the historical traditions of resistance to corporate power. By mapping the legal problem from multiple perspectives—doctrinal, theoretical, empirical, and critical—we’ve created a comprehensive foundation for the critique that will follow in Act II.
To be sure, this is a work in progress. I already see the need to engage more deeply with SB 21 in Part I of the Article. Nevertheless, this draft outline offers a solid foundation to build upon.
Creating Your Visual Roadmap
Beyond the bullet-point outline, creating a visual roadmap can help you maintain perspective on how Act I connects to the overall article structure. This visual representation might take several forms:
Flow Chart: Shows the logical progression of ideas throughout the article
Mind Map: Illustrates connections between different concepts and arguments
Stakeholder Matrix: Maps how different stakeholders relate to various aspects of your legal problem
Timeline: Tracks the evolution of the legal issue over time
For our “Breaking the Machine” case study, a visual roadmap might look like this:
This visual representation helps ensure that Act I sets up the necessary foundation for the arguments that follow in Acts II and III, reinforcing the three-act structure.
Peer Feedback: Testing Your Problem Frame
No matter how thorough your outline, feedback from knowledgeable peers is invaluable for testing the clarity and persuasiveness of your problem framing. When exchanging feedback with colleagues, focus on these specific questions:
Clarity: Is the legal problem clearly defined and its significance established?
Originality: Does the framing clearly distinguish this work from existing scholarship?
Comprehensiveness: Does the problem mapping address doctrinal, theoretical, practical, and critical dimensions?
Balance: Does the presentation of the status quo appear fair and thorough?
Foundation: Does Act I provide the necessary foundation for the arguments that will follow?
Consider organizing structured feedback sessions where peers review outlines using these criteria, providing specific suggestions for strengthening each element rather than general impressions.
Conclusion: From Frame to Foundation
The framing of your legal problem is not merely an introductory formality. It’s the intellectual foundation upon which your entire argument rests.
By mapping your legal problem from multiple perspectives and creating a detailed outline for Act I, you establish both the significance of your inquiry and the context necessary for readers to engage with your analysis.
Your working thesis provides the intellectual backbone for your argument, but the problem framing developed in this installment creates the full skeletal structure that will support your entire analysis. Together, they create a solid foundation for the critique and solutions that will follow in Acts II and III.
In our next installment, we’ll explore techniques for building robust arguments that move from problem identification to persuasive analysis, developing the heart of your article in Act II.
Writing Assignment:
Building on the working thesis you developed in our previous writing assignment, now you’ll expand that foundation into a comprehensive Act I:
Create a detailed bullet-point outline for Act I of your article, including any necessary background/context, and a thorough presentation of the status quo and its rationales.
Develop a visual roadmap that illustrates how your Act I connects to the broader article structure and argument progression.
Draft a preliminary (abbreviated) introduction for your law review article (approximately 750-1000 words) that includes all seven elements discussed: hook, problem statement, scholarly gap, significance, thesis, roadmap, and contribution.
Remember that these are working drafts. The goal at this stage is to establish a solid foundation that will support the development of your argument in subsequent sections.
See you in Part 4!
Becoming Full,
P.S. As always, thank you for reading this week’s issue of The Tenure Track. If you found this article helpful, I encourage you to share it with a colleague or friend who might benefit from these insights. Together, let’s continue to build a supportive and creative academic community.