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Legal Commentary

: Prawfs

Co-authoring Strategies; books, etc.

By Dan Markel, Ethan Leib, Rick Garnett, Matt Bodie, Paul Horwitz , Steve Vladeck, and Orly Lobel

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Here's a question: have any of you tried co-authoring a law review article with someone using Google Docs? Is there some other software (preferably easy and free) to use also? I ask because I wonder what the best technology strategies are for collaboration. With the Privilege or Punish book and its related projects that I've done with Ethan and Jennifer, we basically just used Microsoft Word, redline and email attachments for everything. That strategy was reasonably effective, but it required each of us to take turns with "command" of the particular project for the most part. Not necessarily the best use of time.

Still, my fear with Google Docs is that one can't easily redline or do things with footnotes. Am I missing something--is there a way to achieve Word-type functionality through some kind of sharing mechanism?

Btw, speaking of intellectual collaborations and other distractions from grading, I thought I'd draw your attention to a cool book that literally just landed across my desk and that I look forward to reading over the summer. It's a festschrift for Morton Horwitz published by Harvard Law School (I've not seen their imprint before) but through Harvard University Press. It's called: Transformation in American Legal History (ed. by Daniel Hamilton & Al Brophy), and it's available here. Here's part of the description:

In this book, Horwitz?s students re-examine legal history from America?s colonial era to the late twentieth century. They ask classic Horwitzian questions, of how legal doctrine, thought, and practice are shaped by the interests of the powerful, as well as by the ideas of lawyers, politicians, and others. The essays address current questions in legal history, from colonial legal practice to questions of empire, civil rights, and constitutionalism in a democracy. The essays are, like Horwitz, provocative and original as they continue his transformation of American legal history.

In addition to this book, HUP has a bunch of other new books that look very promising as sources of distractions or objects of focus over the summer. If you've read any of them already, feel free to weigh in with thoughts in the comments.

Abramson, Jeffrey--Minerva's Owl: The Tradition of Western Political Thought (cloth)

Garsten, Bryan--Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (paper)

Grafton, Anthony--Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West (cloth)

Lamont, Michèle--How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (cloth) (I'm about 2/3ds of the way through this interesting study and hope to share some reactions later this summer)

Mann, Bruce H.--Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence (paper)

Posner, Richard A.--A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (cloth)

Powe, Lucas A. , Jr.--The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789-2008 (cloth)

Schauer, Frederick--Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning (cloth)