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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

Smaller Entering Classes for at Least Two Law Schools

Posted on March 04, 2011
The New York Law Journal reports today that at least two New York law schools (Albany and Touro) plan reduce admissions this fall because of the sluggish job market for law school grads. The newspaper quotes one dean as saying...

Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference

Posted on March 04, 2011
Click here to see the latest draft of the program for the 11th Annual Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference, to be held from March 25-26, 2011 at the Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada Las Vegas. (mew)

New Edition of the Charles Calleros Legal Writing Book -- It's All About the Bricks

Posted on March 04, 2011
The cover of the new sixth edition of Charles Calleros's book on Legal Method and Writing (Aspen Publishers) is a picture of bricks. The bricks are a metaphor for court cases (and other sources of legal authority). But beyond an...

Former Legal Writing Professor, Tony Zito (1942-2011)

Posted on March 04, 2011
Professor Anthony S. Zito, Jr. passed away earlier this week, surrounded by his family. Tony was born April 17, 1942 in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from John Adams High School where he was an avid baseball, soccer player and wrestler....

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more credit for LRW at Temple

Posted on March 03, 2011
It's always fun to report good news. Yesterday the law faculty at Temple University voted to add an additional credit to their first-year, fall semester, required Legal Research and Writing course. In addition to the positive faculty vote, the legal....

Videos for oral argument preparation

Posted on March 03, 2011
These videos may be helpful to both professors and students as many classes prepare for oral arguments this spring. In this short clip, Chief Justice Roberts talks about oral argument, emphasizing how to handle questions from the bench. This longer...

Supreme Court Humor

Posted on March 02, 2011
In the FCC opinion handed down on March 1, Chief Justice Roberts engaged in some humor about the meaning of the words ?personal? and ?person,? bantering about pairs like ?corn? and ?corny? and ?crank? and ?cranky.? It was also a...

March 15 deadline to apply for U. Oregon job

Posted on March 01, 2011
If you teach at another law school and you're interested in applying for the visiting position teaching legal writing at the University of Oregon School of Law this fall, you only have until March 15 to get your application in....

video of D.C. plenary presentations

Posted on March 01, 2011
By all accounts, the Capital Area Legal Writing Conference held at the George Washing University Law School in Washington, D.C., this past weekend was a huge success. For the video of Terry Phelps' presentation, click here. For the video of...

legal writing teaching opening in Chicago

Posted on February 26, 2011
Northwestern University School of Law is accepting applications for the position of Clinical Assistant Professor of Law to teach two courses: Communication and Legal Reasoning, the first-year LRW course for JD students, and Common Law Reasoning, a required LRW course...

A possible career for legal writers

Posted on February 25, 2011
Those in the legal writing field may be interested to know that appellate litigation is a burgeoning specialty. A recent article by two practicing lawyers discusses this trend and predicts that it will continue, due to the increased sophistication of...

deadline tomorrow to apply for Gonzaga job

Posted on February 23, 2011
The deadline is tomorrow to apply for the visiting legal writing job next fall semester at Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Washington. The visitor will teach two sections of LR&W I with approximately 14 students in each section,...

No more print journals?

Posted on February 23, 2011
Two years ago, a group of law library directors issued ?The Durham Statement,? which recommended open access to legal scholarship and called for the end of printed law journals. A January 2011 update on the statement?s effects, The Durham Statement...

Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference

Posted on February 23, 2011
Things are shaping up for the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference. Click here for the draft schedule and registration information. The conference is March 25-26, 2011 at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law in Las Vegas, Nevada. (mew)

conference on teaching advanced legal writing

Posted on February 22, 2011
The Arc of Advanced Legal Writing: From Theory through Teaching to Practice is the theme of the Second Colonial Frontier Legal Writing Conference, being held on Saturday, March 5, 2011, at the Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh, PA....

next Monday application deadline for LRW opening at SIU

Posted on February 21, 2011
Southern Illinois University School of Law is currently accepting applications for the LRW teaching job that Sheila Simon vacated upon being elected the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. The full official job announcement is available at here. The job is a...

Tips for improving a brief

Posted on February 21, 2011
Students writing briefs this spring will find some timely tips in a recent bar journal article titled ?Three Simple Ways to Improve Your Briefs.? Raoul G. Cantero, an appellate lawyer with White & Case and a previous Florida Supreme Court...

Pointers about professionalism in brief writing

Posted on February 18, 2011
An appellate judge?s recent bar journal article, Ethics and Professionalism on Appeal, provides some timely pointers for students working on appellate briefs. Judge Peter D. Webster of Florida?s Court of Appeal stresses lawyers? duty to disclose controlling adverse authority...

Tips for a brief's table of contents: how to outline

Posted on February 16, 2011
In recent years, I?ve found that some students don?t understand how to outline. For example, they may not realize that subsection ?A? under ?I? should develop the idea in ?I.? Of course, this presents a problem when they start drafting...

A Strange Five-Year Anniversary

Posted on February 15, 2011
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas last asked a question during oral argument on February 22, 2006, during a death penalty case. The Sunday New York Times for February 13, 2011 notes that, according to political science professor Timothy Johnson...

U.S. News Says it May Start Numbering Schools in its Third Tier

Posted on February 15, 2011
It is everyone's favorite subject to hate -- but why do U.S. law schools give so much power to A MAGAZINE??? As much as people complain about law school rankings, the only remedy for them is . . . more...

Suggestions for writing issue statements

Posted on February 14, 2011
In a new article titled Issue Statements--different kinds for different documents, Professors Wayne Schiess and Elana Einhorn of the University of Texas note that issue statements can take a variety of forms and conclude that no single form suits all...

Lincoln Lawgs

Posted on February 14, 2011
Librarians from several Illinois law schools (Chicago-Kent, The John Marshall Law School, Loyola, and Northwestern) have created a new website for Illinois law students. It's called Lincoln Lawgs and you can click here to have a look at it. The...

another audience for legal writing

Posted on February 12, 2011
Every time my legal writing students start to work on a research and writing project, I insist they return to two basic concepts that they worked on as undergraduates in freshman comp (or, in 10th grade English, if they had...

Two new articles on the readability of briefs

Posted on February 11, 2011
The effect of readability as measured by sentence and word length was recently studied by Professors Lance N. Long of Stetson (pictured at right) and William F. Christensen of Brigham Young University. In Does the Readability of Your Brief Affect...

How Law Profs' Preoccupation with 'Impractical Scholarship' Obstructs Legal Education Reform

Posted on February 10, 2011
Ralph Brill tipped us off to an interesting article on the Tax Law Prof Blog on the connections between traditional "impractical" academic scholarship and the need for skills education in law school. Click here to read more. (mew)

Another example on the importance of punctuation . . . .

Posted on February 09, 2011
I received an email message that said "Please see the attached invitation for futher information." But there was no attachment. A few minutes later I received a follow-up email that said: "Sorry this email has the attached invitation." Of course,...

A federal judge?s suggestions about legal writing

Posted on February 09, 2011
A federal judge provides helpful suggestions about legal writing in a recent California Bar Journal article titled Legal Writing: A Contract between the Reader and the Writer. Judge Andrew Guilford advises lawyers to imagine they?re writing to an ?unsophisticated person...

Is legal writing a mixtape?

Posted on February 08, 2011
In a beautiful use of the extended metaphor, Kim Chanbonpin, at the John Marshall Law School, has written an article on why "Legal Writing is (Not) a Mixtape: Plagiarism and Hip Hop Ethics". Reading a title like that, you have...

The meaning of "dicta"

Posted on February 07, 2011
Professor Judith Stinson of Arizona State University has written a thorough and lucid explanation of the meaning of ?dicta? in an article titled ?Why Dicta Becomes Holding and Why It Matters.? Her article demonstrates that lawyers and even courts often...

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