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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

answers from Chicago

Posted on October 04, 2008
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) has a delightful online Q & A feature, with editors bravely answering writers' questions about abbreviations, bibliographies, footnotes, quotations, punctuation, and which vs. that, among others. Sometimes they'll send you straight to the rule...

call for proposals for APPEAL's South Africa conference

Posted on October 03, 2008
APPEAL (Academics Promoting the Pedagogy of Effective Advocacy in Law) and the University of Pretoria Faculty of Law will host the Conference on Promoting the Teaching of Legal Writing in Southern Africa on July 1-4, 2009, in Pretoria, South Africa.....

podcasting legal skills instruction

Posted on October 03, 2008
Since launching earlier this year on iTunes U, the Suffolk University Law School Legal Practice Skills podcasts have experienced enormous success, with one recording ranking among the top 10 most downloaded law-related iTunes U podcasts worldwide. In addition, the Weekly...

pop quiz (the series?)

Posted on October 03, 2008
One of our favorite writing blogs, Set in Style, posted a pop quiz today asking readers to identify the grammatical error(s) in a recent judicial order. See if you can spot the error(s)--without scrolling down to read answers posted by...

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new flyer available for DC conference on rhetoric

Posted on October 03, 2008
A new flyer has been issued concerning the "How Legal Rhetoric Shapes the Law: The Language of Violence and Torture" conference that American University, Washington College of Law is sponsoring on November 7, 2008. Registration is free; it includes lunch...

collecting data on legal writing professors' status

Posted on October 03, 2008
Professor Gail Stephenson of the Southern University Law Center has for some period of time collected data on the employment status of legal writing faculty across the nation, and she's presently working on an article concerning ABA Standard 405(c). Such...

call for proposals for 2nd Storytelling Conference

Posted on October 03, 2008
Organizers of the Applied Storytelling Conference have announced plans for the second biennial gathering of this group, to be held at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, on July 22-24, 2009. The first conference, whose proceedings and papers...

Monty Python props

Posted on October 03, 2008
Admit it--it's your guilty pleasure--some of you are Monty Python fans. We know that some legal writing profs wear costume-y things at times (does Darth Vader ring a bell?), so if you are (coco)nuts about Monty Python (especially the Holy...

Words Matter: What to Call Your Plans for Class

Posted on October 02, 2008
When I first started teaching, I named what I was planning to do ?lesson plans.? When I came back to my document a year later, I thought, ?geez, I?m teaching in a university, not a pre-school, and quickly changed the...

When the writing professor has writer's block

Posted on October 01, 2008
This article from the September 26, 2008 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education may help. It discusses a new boutique profession devoted to assisting academics struggling with writer's block, not an insignificant problem if your position requires you to...

kudos to Dave Romantz!

Posted on October 01, 2008
Long-time legal writing director and professor at the University of Memphis, David Romantz, has been tapped to be the next Associate Dean of Academic Affairs there. He begins his new post in the summer of 2009. Next year that law...

metaphorically speaking, the bailout is . . .

Posted on October 01, 2008
Columnist Dana Milbank of the Washington Post covered Monday's debate on the House floor concerning the proposed Wall Street bailout. He noticed that some of the members had rather colorful ways of expressing their opinions on the bill. For example,....

rehearing denied in Kennedy v. Louisiana

Posted on October 01, 2008
We reported recently about the request for rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana, a case in which everyone, including the justices' law clerks, overlooked a recent federal statute that permitted the death penalty in military courts for defendants convicted of child...

the Future of the Legal Course Book

Posted on October 01, 2008
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has an article today about Seattle U's workshop on the "Future of the Legal Course Book." Participants met to discuss the preparation and promotion of electronic course materials. They believe that electronic course materials would...

Thanks, Blog Readers

Posted on October 01, 2008
Last month was our best ever in the history of this blog. We had 7,891 visits and 12,478 page views in September. On behalf of all the editors, thank you for visiting us. Please continue to send us guest posts...

Are You a Member of Clarity?

Posted on October 01, 2008
Clarity is an international organization promoting plain legal language. There are 1,019 members in 52 countries and jurisdictions (depending on how you count the Isle of Man, but there is only one member there). Professor Joseph Kimble is the USA...

an abundance of good jobs teaching legal writing

Posted on September 30, 2008
Cruising through the blogosphere tonight, I ran across this sad account by someone disappointed by accounts of how teaching fellows in legal writing aren't doing what they really want to do. And then there's the reference in that same post...

SSRN papers on legal writing

Posted on September 30, 2008
One good way to keep up with new scholarship in legal writing is to read this blog, as our "scholarship dude," Jim Levy, brings new publications to your attention. Recent examples are here (new publications on contract drafting and demand...

A Good Issue for a Legal Writing Problem

Posted on September 30, 2008
When you steal someone's identity, you're guilty of identity theft. The circuits are split, however, on whether you are still guilty of identity theft if the person whose identity you're using is an invented person. You're still guilty of fraud...

confronting adverse authority

Posted on September 29, 2008
Kathy Stanchi (Temple) has posted her new article, Playing with Fire: The Science of Confronting Adverse Authority in Legal Advocacy, on SSRN. You can download it here: Here's the abstract: For a long time, practitioners and scholars have debated whether...

could be an interesting fact pattern . . .

Posted on September 29, 2008
OK, I couldn't find the article in any periodical that I would even admit to reading, but stories of whether stolen pics of Jamie Lynn Spears breastfeeding her baby could result in child porn charges against the photo-seller are just...

snip, snip, snip

Posted on September 29, 2008
Have you ever struggled with cutting the length of a wordy memo or brief when you needed to keep all of the points? Do your students complain that your page limits are too short? I thought so. That's why I...

lawyers experiment with wikis

Posted on September 28, 2008
Everybody knows about Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, but not everyone has tried a (lowercase) wiki for group composition and editing. Law.com recently reported on lawyers in firms and legal departments who "have begun testing the wiki waters over the last...

Spence on "tyrant judges"

Posted on September 28, 2008
While I don't agree with all he says, Gerry Spence has posted an interesting three-part series on his blog titled "How to Survive the Tyrant Judge." Here are links to the three postings, with a representative quote from each: Part...

laptops & legal writing

Posted on September 27, 2008
This semester I asked my students not to bring laptops to legal writing class. (I do encourage them to bring their laptops when they are having a lesson dedicated specifically to research techniques, which they can identify by the syllabus.)...

legal reasoning in both legal writing and substantive courses

Posted on September 27, 2008
A new post by Marc Blitz at Prawfsblog addresses the way legal reasoning is taught in substantive law courses. Blitz recently taught a course in legal reasoning, using Steven J. Burton's Introduction to Law and Legal Reasoning. Burton's preface claimed...

r-o-c-k in the law review

Posted on September 27, 2008
Oklahoma City law professor Alex B. Long has a new article out that examines the use of music lyrics in legal writing. In [Insert Song Lyrics Here]: The Uses and Misuses of Popular Music Lyrics In Legal Writing, Long observes...

How not to argue your case before the court.

Posted on September 26, 2008
Here's another lesson in what not to do as an attorney courtesy of Youtube. This time, it's a 2L from University of Miami School of Law appearing before Judge Milian of "The People's Court" to defend what appears to be...

Mercer to host Law & Rhetoric workshop preceding AALS meeting

Posted on September 26, 2008
Mercer University School of Law will sponsor a Law & Rhetoric Workshop, Legal Writing Through a Rhetorical Lens, on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, at the Hilton San Diego, Gaslamp Quarter. The workshop will take place immediately before the start of...

If you forget to Shepardize, don't do it in front of a national audience.

Posted on September 25, 2008
Thanks to our wonderful, Harvard bound law librarian Meg Kribble here at Nova Law School for finding this legal research gem on YouTube. It's a clip from the O.J. Simpson trial during which Marcia Clark is caught by Judge Ito...

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