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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.
New article ?A Methodology for Mentoring Writing in Law Practice."
Posted on September 07, 2008Boston College Law Professors Jane Kent Gionfriddo, Daniel Barnett and Joan Blum have just authored a new article entitled ?A Methodology for Mentoring Writing in Law Practice: Using Textual Clues to Provide Effective and Efficient Feedback" which is intended to...
Call for Papers: National Law School of India Review
Posted on September 07, 2008The National Law School of India Review invites submissions for its forthcoming issues. Click here for more information. A further link on that website provides information on author guidelines for articles, essays, and casenotes on develpments in India and other...
plain language bill needs your help!
Posted on September 07, 2008A request from Joe Kimble of Thomas Cooley: For two sessions of Congress, plain-language advocates have been working to get a bill through Congress. We thought we had made it, but we are now stalled on the one-foot line. So...
Librarians for Liberians!
Posted on September 06, 2008For those of you who teach international and foreign legal research, here's a new Guide to the Liberian Legal System and Legal Research by Hanatu Kabbah. It describes the legal structure of government in Liberia and includes some useful links...
How to Search the Legal Writing Prof Blog
Posted on September 06, 2008Have we written about you? Your publications? Your presentations at a conference? Your promotions at school? Your hair? Well, hopefully not the last one -- and hopefully many of the first categories. You can search the Legal Writing Prof Blog...
How to Subscribe to the Legal Writing Prof Blog
Posted on September 06, 2008In the right hand column you will find a box (under "News Readers and Feeds"). There's a box there where you put in your email address ("Subscribe me!"). If you do that, you'll get an email message on the days...
plain language bill needs some help!
Posted on September 05, 2008A request from Joe Kimble of Thomas Cooley: Dear All, Never thought I'd be asking for this kind of help, but here goes. . For two sessions of Congress, plain-language advocates have been working to get a bill through Congress....
turn your students into newts; they'll get better
Posted on September 05, 2008Are your students in a muddle over the Socratic Method? To help them understand the underpinnings of that teaching style, try using a teaching script penned by Professor Hillary Burgess (Hofstra) to accompany a film clip from Monty Python and...
call for proposals from textbook author conference
Posted on September 05, 2008The Text and Academic Authors Association's 2009 conference is scheduled for June 25-27, 2009, in San Antonio, Texas. This year's conference offers concurrent tracks for textbook authors and academic authors, as well as sessions appealing to both. Other features of...
new chair at Chicago-Kent honors Ralph Brill
Posted on September 05, 2008Viewed by many as the "Godfather of Legal Writing," our friend and colleague Ralph Brill has been honored by the creation of an endowed chair in his honor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law. (Back in...
The ABA wants to know: How would you change legal education?
Posted on September 04, 2008The ABA Journal asks on its blog today "If you were the Legal Ed Czar, what would you do" to change the way law schools prepare students for the practice of law. I assume most readers of this blog would...
never use â?oitâ?Tsâ? in legal writing
Posted on September 03, 2008My students take a diagnostic test during Orientation that helps us identify their weaknesses in grammar and punctuation. Today I used the e-mail option of a popular course utility (which shall remain nameless) to send them my comments on the...
still on the books
Posted on September 03, 2008If you're looking for some statutes that might get your students' attention while discussing statutory construction, check out the Dumb Laws website. It inclues many anachronistic or plain old peculiar statutes that allegedly are still good law somewhere in the...
Linked In?
Posted on September 02, 2008If you are a member of the Legal Writing Institute, you can join the LWI Group on Linked In. Click here. (mew)
Let the "scholarship dude" publicize your legal writing article.
Posted on September 02, 2008The Legal Writing Blog is an excellent resource not only to let fellow academics know about developments within the discipline of legal writing, but it's an even better outreach tool to let the practicing bar know about the work legal...
Should Illinois Hold a Constitutional Convention?
Posted on September 02, 2008Here's a new paper from Professor Ann Lousin on whether Illinois should hold a constitutional convention. The great state of Illinois will vote on a referendum this November as to whether the state should call a new constitutional convention. It...
Recently published
Posted on September 02, 2008Here are titles of and links to some recently published articles of interest, whether because they concern legal writing, address legal reasoning, or were written by legal writing profs. Links are to Lexis [L] and Westlaw [W] versions (if you're...
10,000 Views
Posted on September 02, 2008The Legal Writing Prof Blog had more than 6,000 visits last month and more than 10,000 page views. We are glad that you find us so interesting! The editors
plagiarism and plagiarists
Posted on September 02, 2008If it's the time of the semester when you're talking to your students about plagiarism, you might want to direct them to an interesting website--http://www.famousplagiarists.com. There's even a "Plagiary's Hall of Shame" page. While you may disagree with who's on...
New article on Behavioral Biology and Constitutional Analysis
Posted on September 01, 2008Professor Scott Fruehwald of Hofstra Law School has been especially prolific lately including this article recently published in the Oklahoma City University Law Review. While not strictly pertaining to legal writing, because he is a legal writing professor, the Scholarship...
hand-out on analogies
Posted on September 01, 2008Prof. Susan Duncan has written a bar journal article that would work well as a hand out for legal writing students. It's titled Crafting Analogies and Distinctions That Work. (spl)
a cool contractual interpretation case
Posted on September 01, 2008Cleveland's The Plain Dealer recently reported about a contractual interpretation case: "A piece of downtown land isn't worth its weight in gold -- but it is worth 1,693.28 ounces, the amount set in a gold-based lease signed 96 years ago....
JALWD deadline
Posted on September 01, 2008Here's a reminder from Linda Berger: The deadline (Download jalwdcallforarticles2009_2.pdf) is approaching for Fall 2009 issue of J. ALWD: Best Practices in Persuasion. The deadline is September 15, 2008, but if you anticipate having a submission ready within a week...
new articles
Posted on September 01, 2008The abstracts below arrived in today's e-mail, courtesy of LWI and SSRN: "Training Field Supervisors to Be Efficient and Effective Critics of Student Writing" BERNADETTE FEELEY, Suffolk University Law School Most externship clinicians encourage field supervisors to provide students guidance...
legal writing job-seekers: make plans for AALS faculty recruitment conference
Posted on August 30, 2008The AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference is set for its annual convocation in Washington, DC. Details of the conference are available here. All interviewing will take place at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, located at 2660 Woodley Road, NW, Washington, D...
new details on "How Legal Rhetoric Shapes the Law" conference
Posted on August 29, 2008A couple of days ago, we announced the upcoming November 7, 2008, conference to be held at American University, Washington College of Law: How Legal Rhetoric Shapes the Law. This year's conference theme is drawn from the language of violence...
What's next? Puffy shirt precedents?
Posted on August 29, 2008The ABA Journal online reports that a Maryland appellate court recently cited a 1996 episode of the Seinfeld television comedy in a case involving a partnership dispute between novelist Tom Clancy and his ex-wife. The decision, issued on August 26,...
Does the Teachers Manual Include a Recipe for Sheila Simon's Lasagna?
Posted on August 29, 2008Richard K. Neuman (Hofstra University) and Sheila Simon (Southern Illinois University) are co-authors of a new legal writing text published by Aspen. An email message from the publisher--including some quite wonderful caricatures of Richard and Sheila--informs me that there is...
A social networking site for book-lovers
Posted on August 28, 2008Have you just finished a good book that you'd like to tell your friends about? Then Goodreads.com is the website for you. Founded in 2006, Goodreads is a yet another social networking site except this one is built on the...
visiting positions at Stetson
Posted on August 28, 2008Stetson University College of Law will hire as many as three visiting professors to teach in its Legal Research and Writing program during the Fall 2009 semester or the full 2009-2010 school year. The College of Law?s main campus is...
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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...








