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Legal Writing

Legal Writing Prof Blog

By law professors Coleen M. Barger, Sue Liemer and Nancy Soonpaa

Post Frequency: 31.6/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 15:42:31

Defaults on student loans hit 11 year high but as of yet, no bankruptcy relief

Posted on May 14, 2009
So you understand what our students are facing in this large, sometimes cruel world of ours, if they can't find good paying jobs, their student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy - unless and until Congress changes the law. The...

Rules of professional conduct for social networking sites

Posted on May 14, 2009
Here's something useful for students and faculty alike. The Legal Blog Watch has taken a list of conduct rules given to Wall Street Journal staffers concerning appropriate behavior on Facebook, Twitter and similar "sites" (are you with me so far?)...

College students may be computer-literate but they are not research-literate

Posted on May 14, 2009
According to the librarians interviewed for this story in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Many faculty members, especially senior ones, believe they are less adept at using those tools than their students are. While that much may be true, the...

Sentence diagramming makes a come back - sort of

Posted on May 14, 2009
File under "Hey! I remember that!" The Chronicle of Higher Ed is reporting on a Trinity College (Hartford, Conn.) English Prof who teaches a course in sentence diagramming in a manner that has post-adolescent college students more excited and enthusiastic...

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order and authority, one point four

Posted on May 12, 2009
Some rules you just shouldn't memorize. (cmb)

One prof's feeble attempt at movie-making

Posted on May 11, 2009
This is all John Mollenkamp's fault. He posted a link on Twitter to xtranormal.com, a free site that makes movies out of text you type. Well, there is a bit more to it than that, but not a lot. I...

New study finds no relationship between amount of time spent on Facebook and grades

Posted on May 10, 2009
Last month, we reported on a study that found a correlation between the amount of time students spend on Facebook and their grades. Although the researcher denied a causal connection, that qualifier was often lost in some of the reporting...

what to take when the tornado sirens blare

Posted on May 10, 2009
Last Friday afternoon, for the first time in months, I had no classes to teach, no meetings to attend, no other scheduled activities to participate in. So I was at home grading papers. The weather was rainy and windy, good...

Advice on how to grade in order to avoid those pesky student appeals

Posted on May 10, 2009
Here's some good advice from Inside Higher Ed. about how to minimize the number of students who challenge their grades by communicating expectations more clearly and effectively before those assignments are turned in. One great read on grade appeals is...

Scholarhip alert: "Ex Parte Blogging: The Legal Ethics of Supreme Court Advocacy in The Internet Era"

Posted on May 10, 2009
This is a very interesting student note in the Stanford Law Review that explores the ethical implications, in light of Kennedy v. Louisiana, of attorneys trying to influence the outcome of a case by blogging about it. As you may...

Claim of widespread overbilling for online legal research causes client freak-out

Posted on May 09, 2009
The online ABA Journal is reporting that a former client of Chadbourne & Parke is suing the firm over alleged over-billing practices in connection with Westlaw and Lexis services. The lawsuit claims that the law firm paid a flat rate...

New website for depressed lawyers, judges and law students

Posted on May 09, 2009
With two lawyer suicides in the past week seemingly related to lay-offs, this is an unfortunate sign of the times. You can access the website, lawyerswithdepression.com, here. Hat tip to Above the Law. I am the scholarship dude. (jbl)

A school that requires students to buy iPhones and/or iPod Touch as learning tool

Posted on May 09, 2009
OK, so it's the University of Missouri's School of Journalism rather than a law school - but innovation, like opportunity, is where you find it. The idea behind this requirement is that because most students use the devices anyway, making...

transforming legal learning

Posted on May 08, 2009
The AALS Section on Academic Support has announcesd its program on Transforming Learning in the Classroom: the 21st Century Law Professor, for the 2010 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. The presenters will be: Co-Moderators: Emily L. Randon, UC...

Global Legal Skills Conference IV

Posted on May 07, 2009
Here's a reminder about the upcoming Global Legal Skills Conference at Georgetown University Law Center. Click here for information on the program and registration. (mew)

Legal writing, the outlaw biker and death on the interstate

Posted on May 07, 2009
OK, so this story has no literal connection to legal writing, as Walter Sobchak might say, but I'm going to tell it anyway. It's an example of how one can be in both the right place, and the wrong place,...

Scribd

Posted on May 07, 2009
If you are looking for a quick link to a document, and your usual legal data base and web searches are coming up dry, try going to Scribd. If you want to make a document accessible to the world, this...

Where do I sign up for those law firm deferred start date programs?

Posted on May 07, 2009
Not to make you feel bad right before the weekend, but do you realize that BigLaw is paying deferred associates not to work (the going rate is about $5k a month to stay home) more than some of us make...

New legal economy means BigLaw and elite law schools are "out" while regional schools and smaller firms are "in"

Posted on May 07, 2009
There are many silver linings in the current legal economic crisis. One that we have repeatedly blogged about is that circumstances are forcing schools to create a greater nexus between the education they offer to students and the demands of...

Professionalism alert: The perils to lawyers (and their staff) who Tweet

Posted on May 07, 2009
The Legal Blog Watch contains an interesting editorial about the confidentiality perils of lawyers (or their paralegals, assistants, witnesses and/or experts) who Tweet about their cases. The jumping off point is an article in today's Washington Post about how a...

List of "Top 10" most innovative law schools

Posted on May 07, 2009
This one comes to us, once again, from our good friends at the Law Librarian blog. PreLaw Magazine has named the following schools as most innovative based on a survey of law school deans: Chicago Kent, DePaul, Gonzaga, New York...

Demo video of Amazon Kindle DX - see the future of textbooks now!

Posted on May 07, 2009
Thanks to our good buddy Joe Hodnicki at the Law Library Blog for tipping me off to this demo video of the newly released Kindle DX. Of course no one knows for sure whether this will become the dominant e-reading...

Some female attorneys claim female superiors are their worst tormentors

Posted on May 06, 2009
This is an interesting story. The May issue of The American Lawyer includes an article called The End of Sisterhood discussing the complaint among some female attorneys that female superiors treat them the worst. As the article explains: Over sushi,....

Blackboard buys rival course management software

Posted on May 06, 2009
For all you Lexis-Blackboard users out there, you might be interested in this news item. The course management software giant is acquiring a company called Angel Learning that makes a competing software package. You can read the rest of the...

Law schools must create a more practical curriculum to adapt to the new legal marketplace

Posted on May 06, 2009
To faithful readers of this blog, "old news is no news." We already know that the convergence of several factors such as the Carnegie Report and the abysmal legal job market are putting tremendous pressure on law schools to better...

Update on Twitter Quitter story - Nielsen responds to critics

Posted on May 06, 2009
Earlier this week, my blogleague, Professor Barger, posted a story about the results of a Nielsen survey showing that 60% of Twitter users quit within a month. The Nielsen people took some heat from the Twitter community so they ran...

CALI workshop on "best practices" for social media

Posted on May 05, 2009
Social media--that is, sites and applications like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the like--bring new ways to connect and communicate with others, but they also bring new challenges. This summer's CALI conference at the University of Colorado (Boulder, CO) has added...

Legal writing professor alleges contract not renewed due to age and gender bias

Posted on May 05, 2009
According to Law.com, legal writing professor Rosanne Piatt has filed a discrimination charge with the EEOC alleging that St. Mary's School of Law declined to renew her annual contract due to age and gender discrimination. Professor Piatt's annual contract has...

the jurisprudential essay

Posted on May 05, 2009
A form of legal writing not familiar to most U.S. legal writers is the essay on jurisprudence, i.e., an essay on legal philosophy. Volume 58, number 3, of the Journal of Legal Education includes a fascinating article on this writing...

"Multitasking is a myth" declares author of new book on the science of concentration

Posted on May 05, 2009
Yup, it's official - students can't buy shoes, "text" friends, do their taxes and learn the Rule Against Perpetuities at the same time. At least according to this new book by author Winifred Gallagher called "Rapt: Attention and the Focused...

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