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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 Recent Entries: 2529
Go to Legal Writing Prof Blog, find other Legal Writing blogs, or browse all law blogs.
Proposals for Rocky Mountain Regional Writing Conference Due January 12
Posted on December 30, 2010The Eleventh Annual Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference will be held on March 25-26, 2011 at The University of Nevada Boyd School of Law in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Program Committee invites participants to submit proposals for conference presentations...
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference - Proposals Due January 21
Posted on December 30, 2010The Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference has issued a call for proposals for its conference on April 15-16, 2011 in Macon, Georgia. The conference theme will be ?Opening the Lens: Re-Visions in Legal Writing Teaching, Theory, & Practice.? The deadline...
distinguished visiting position in legal writing
Posted on December 29, 2010The University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law is seeking applications from renowned legal educators for a year-long appointment as the Ralph Petrilli Distinguished Visiting Professor for the 2011-12 academic term. The Petrilli Distinguished Visiting Professor will teach a total...
transactional drafting teaching suggestions
Posted on December 28, 2010For some encouragement and advice on teaching law students to write outside the litigation context, whether you just introduce the idea in a 1L course or teach an entire tranactional drafting course, there is a helpful article by Susan Chesler...
Widner's accepting applications until January 15th
Posted on December 28, 2010The deadline to apply for the Legal Methods teaching job for next year at Widener University School of Law's Wilmington, Delaware, campus is January 15, 2011. Widener?s program in legal analysis, writing, and research is a collaboratively developed three-semester sequence...
Just in time for the impending
Posted on December 26, 2010Just in time for the impending new year, Scribes - The American Society of Legal Writers has announced activation of its redesigned website. Annually, Scribes presents two awards to recognize high-quality legal writing by law students: the Law-Review Award, which...
International Negotiation Competition will be in Denmark Next Year
Posted on December 26, 2010Our blog co-editor Nancy Soonpaa commented on an earlier post on this blog about the International Negotiation Competition. She wrote that next year's competition will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Get those passports ready! Nancy (pictured at right) and a...
are student memos are like storage units?
Posted on December 25, 2010Having finished grading memos, for the first time I caught a TV show called Auction Hunters, where the contents of abandoned self-storage units are auctioned off. During the auction, when the door to a unit is opened up, the potential...
Friday fun
Posted on December 24, 2010So it's Friday, and it just happens to be the day Santa flies around the globe. Thanks to NORAD (yes, the alliance responsible for aerospace security over Canada and the United States), you can track Santa's progress all day today....
LSAC grants for a variety of scholarship projects
Posted on December 24, 2010The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) Research Grant Program funds research on a wide variety of topics related to the mission of the LSAC. Specifically included in the program's scope are projects investigating precursors to legal training, selection into law...
more on reading briefs on-line
Posted on December 23, 2010A law review article by legal writing professor Maria Crist (University of Dayton) is cited in a story in the December ABA Journal Tech Report. Very telling is the comment afterwards by a courthouse staff attorney, who reports that multi-line...
Charles Calleros Wins ABA Award
Posted on December 22, 2010The American Bar Association's Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession is a diverse group of committed lawyers promoting leadership and economic opportunities for racially and ethnically diverse lawyers within the ABA and the legal profession...
how to avoid writing bad briefs
Posted on December 22, 2010Recently re-called to my attention was a very helpful article by Sarah Ricks & Jane Istvan, Effective Brief Writing Despite High Volume Practice: Ten Misconceptions that Result in Bad Briefs, 30 University of Toledo Law Review 1113 (2007). As the...
the impact of technology on writing
Posted on December 21, 2010Peter Tiersma has written an interesting book chapter as an overview of the interaction between the way we write, physically, and what we end up writing as lawyers. Here's his summary of his introduction to Parchment, Paper, Pixels: Law and...
West Publishing Ordered to Pay $2.5 Million in Punitive Damages
Posted on December 21, 2010Well here's something to ask the West Publishing reps about when you see them at the AALS exhibit hall. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a federal jury in Philadelphia has ordered the West Publishing Corporation to pay $2.5-million...
Ralph Brill's Surprise 75th Birthday Party!
Posted on December 20, 2010Ralph Brill (Chicago-Kent) turned 75 yesterday! A surprise party was held for him yesterday in Chicago, including birthday greetings from more than 150 legal writing professors around the country and videos of LWI workshop participants singing "happy birthday...
What are law students doing in their own scholarship?
Posted on December 20, 2010For the answer to that question, take a look at Taking Note of Notes: Student Legal Scholarship in Theory and Practice, by Andrew Yaphe at Standford Law School. As he puts it, his article "does two things, neither of which...
Colonial Frontier Legal Writing Conference
Posted on December 20, 2010The Second Colonial Frontier Legal Writing Conference will be held on Saturday, March 5, 2011, at the Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh, PA. The theme of the conference is The Arc of Advanced Legal Writing: From Theory through...
Former Kaplan University Law Dean Faces Up to $1.5 Million Fine and Up to 18 Years in Prison
Posted on December 20, 2010Bennie Wilcox, the former law Dean of Legal Studies for Kaplan University, has been found guilty of writing threatening emails to students and other employees of the online law school in 2007. He now faces up to 18 years in...
Congratulations, Judy R.!
Posted on December 19, 2010The AALS Section on Legal Writing, Research, and Reasoning has announced its secretary elect is Judy Rosenbaum. The officers of the Section automatically advance up the ladder each year, so Judy will be the Section Chair in a few years....
Your AALS Legal Writing Dance Card - EXPANDED and WITH LOCATIONS
Posted on December 17, 2010There's a number of events of interest to legal writing professors (and their supporters) at the upcoming AALS meeting in San Francisco. Here's an UPDATED "Dance Card" for legal writing events at AALS, including additional events and locations. This is...
well begun is ....
Posted on December 15, 2010Careful, if you admit you first encountered the line "well begun is halfway done" watching the original Mary Poppins movie, you may be aging yourself. But the line is a very apt part of the title of a new article...
LRW at SALT
Posted on December 14, 2010Yes, you need to learn to read the alphabet soup to be a legal educator. On December 10th & 11th, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) held its annual conference. Veteran legal writing professors Lorraine Bannai and Anne Enquist,...
upcoming deadlines for proposals for regional workshops
Posted on December 14, 2010Next spring's regional legal writing conferences have deadlines coming up for proposals: December 20, 2010 -- deadline to send a proposal to present at the Empire State Legal Writing Conference, which takes place May 13, 2011, at St. John's University...
more LWI workshop photos
Posted on December 12, 2010We're still getting photos from the LWI One-day Workshops. These are from the Charleston School of Law location. In the first photo, you see Sarah Ricks (Rutgers-Camden), Brooke Bowman (Stetson), and Kevin Eberle (Charleston School of Law) presenting their panel...
More Dangers of Facebook
Posted on December 12, 2010Guess what? A party may be compelled through the discovery process to provide an opponent with access to Facebook and MySpace accounts. Click here to read more on the Legal Profession Blog. Legal writing profs can probably use this information...
AALS Section award announced!
Posted on December 11, 2010The AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning & Research Section Award has announced its 2011 Section Award recipient: Elizabeth Fajans. Congratulations! The award is given annually to an individual who has made a significant lifetime contribution to the field of...
more One-day Workshop pics
Posted on December 09, 2010These photos show a very attentive audience at the LWI One-Day Workshop at Widener University School of Law, on their Wilmington, Delaware, campus last Friday. Theresa Clark and Christine Mooney, both from Villanova Law School, are the speakers in the...
Here it is! The Fall 2010 Newsletter of the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research
Posted on December 08, 2010Here's a document that you will want to open, print, and share with colleagues. Bring a copy with you to San Francisco if you're coming to the AALS Annual Meeting. If you're not attending that meeting, you'll still find a...
Your AALS Legal Writing Dance Card
Posted on December 07, 2010There's a number of events of interest to legal writing professors (and their supporters) at the upcoming AALS meeting in San Francisco. The AALS meeting starts on Wednesday afternoon and the first legal writing event is a "Business Meeting" for...
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Did I harass someone?
Oh, yes. This can be taken in as so many things, especially since you had testif...
How to evict a roommate?
First, in most jurisdictions "self-help" is not a remedy available to any party ...
I have worked for this employer for only three weeks. The employer makes up his own rules as to what he chooses to report for the purpose of property taxes. He tells me to "let them come after us". He defines Entertain
He arrogantly insists, "let them come after us." Well, if you are invo...
Can a probation officer make a decision that involves a medical decision and prohibit a person from leaving a state to get medical help?
well if you could get him to a mental health facility they could screen him for ...
This has happened 3 or 4 times a month now- they have turned the electric off 2 days consecutively, the water off about 9 or 10 times now, and our heat has broken 5 times (once it would not shut off, and we were forced t
i say stick with the apartment. eventually, everything possible will be replaced...

Did I harass someone?
Oh, yes. This can be taken in as so many things, especially since you had testif...
How to evict a roommate?
First, in most jurisdictions "self-help" is not a remedy available to any party ...
I have worked for this employer for only three weeks. The employer makes up his own rules as to what he chooses to report for the purpose of property taxes. He tells me to "let them come after us". He defines Entertain
He arrogantly insists, "let them come after us." Well, if you are invo...
Can a probation officer make a decision that involves a medical decision and prohibit a person from leaving a state to get medical help?
well if you could get him to a mental health facility they could screen him for ...
This has happened 3 or 4 times a month now- they have turned the electric off 2 days consecutively, the water off about 9 or 10 times now, and our heat has broken 5 times (once it would not shut off, and we were forced t
i say stick with the apartment. eventually, everything possible will be replaced...








