The profession rejected this strictly «formalist» approach to teaching writing processes as inadequate preparation for independent legal writing and analysis.44 The
shift away from models in legal writing instruction accompanied a
shift to teaching students to write from the social perspective.45 The social perspective
integrates into writing processes an understanding of the purposes for which a particular document is written, the
identities of its audiences, and the needs of those audiences.46 Part of the New Rhetoric evaluates students» work, in part, by how well it fulfills the audiences» needs.47 The difficulty for the first - year law student in this paradigm for learning analysis and writing processes is that she does not know the audience for her first legal writing projects, and she has no basis for comprehending the audience's needs.