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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

Burton Award nominations due Friday

Posted on February 07, 2011
For over a decade, the Burton Awards for Legal Achievement have recognized excellent legal writing done by lawyers and law students. For the past seven years, the Burton Awards have included an award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education...

applications for legal writing scholarship grants due Monday

Posted on February 05, 2011
The ALWD/LWI Scholarship Grant Committee has announced that LexisNexis is donating $10,000 to the pool of available grant money for the 2011 Legal Writing Scholarship Grants. Adding this contribution to the grant money supplied by LWI and ALWD brings the...

LRW at AALS

Posted on February 04, 2011
David Austin (at California Western) took some great photos at the AALS annual meeting last month. He has generously made access to them easy. To see photos from the Friends of Legal Writing Luncheon, click here. To see photos from...

Blurring the legal standard

Posted on February 03, 2011
A recent case illustrates the importance of careful analysis and wording in legal writing. In Perry v. AT & T Operations, Inc., a lawyer?s motion was stricken partly because it blurred the applicable legal standard. The motion for summary judgment...

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legal writing conference in South Africa

Posted on February 03, 2011
APPEAL has announced its next conference will take place December 8-10, 2011, at the University of Zululand's Richards Bay Campus (about 90 miles north of Durban, South Africa). The focus of the conference will be Preparing Students for the Practice....

Easy Reading, Hard Writing

Posted on February 01, 2011
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that ?Easy reading is damn hard writing.? Professor Suzanne Rowe reminded readers of this truth in an article in the Jaunary Oregon State Bar Bulletin. Rowe emphasized that writing, rewriting, proofing, and accepting criticism are difficult even...

how 2Ls and 3Ls approach a legal research & writing problem

Posted on February 01, 2011
Ever wonder how much students are able to run with what they learn in their first-year LRW courses? Jootaek Lee has studied how upper level law students approach research problems and published the results in an article on "Legal Informatics:...

Comments on FRAP 28

Posted on January 31, 2011
Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, Chair of the Federal Appellate Rules Advisory Committee,has asked the for comments on a proposal to repeal or amend Rule 28(a)(6) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. The rule requires the appellant's brief to include...

Jessup Problem Authors Sought for 2012

Posted on January 31, 2011
The International Law Students Association is now seeking proposals for the 2012 Compromis from prospective authors. The ILSA Board of Directors will consider all proposals and decide the winning submission at the end of March. Proposals should contain four principal...

job opening in Indiana

Posted on January 30, 2011
Another law school in the Midwest, Valparaiso, is also looking for a full-time legal writing professor. This job could either have a renewable contract or be tenure track, depending on an applicant?s experience and credentials. If you have questions about...

job opening in Southern Illinois

Posted on January 28, 2011
When one of your legal writing professors is elected the Lieutenant Governor of the state, eventually you do have to hire someone to fill the legal writing job on a permanent basis. That's why we're currently searching for an LRW...

Clunky Writing

Posted on January 26, 2011
In a January 7 Chronicle Review piece titled "The Elements of Clunk," Ben Yagoda contends that student writing is becoming more awkward, partly because students don't read enough edited and published prose. Yagoda states that his students do realize that...

conference on engaging and assessing our students

Posted on January 25, 2011
The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning is holding a conference in New York City on June 1 -3, 2011, to focus on the topic of Engaging and Assessing Our Students. Legal writing professors have long experience engaging and assessing...

Global Legal Skills Conference Proposals Due January 31

Posted on January 24, 2011
The sixth Global Legal Skills Conference will take place on May 5-7, 2011 at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Persons interested in making a presentation or organizing a panel for the conference should submit proposals to the Planning...

the Plain Writing Act

Posted on January 24, 2011
Irwin Berent, President of the Plain Writing Association, has completed a legislative history of the plain language movement, available here at the P.W.A.'s website. His research reviews the legislative process that led to passage of the Plain Writing Act and...

Examples of Good Legal Writing

Posted on January 24, 2011
Looking for examples of good legal writing? In its spring 2010 issue, the Green Bag published a list of "Exemplary Legal Writing" that includes court opinions, concurrences, dissents, books, and articles from 2009. I particularly like Judge Rakoff's opinion and...

favorite law library websites for law student resources

Posted on January 23, 2011
A couple of months ago, Ursula Wiegold, at the University of Wisconsin, polled LRW professors to find out our favorite websites to send law students to for law library resources. These websites were the favorites: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/library.htm (legal research guides) http://library...

What skills and values do practitioners most value?

Posted on January 23, 2011
In 2005, Stephen Gerst (Phoenix) and Gerald Hess (Gonzaga) conducted a survey of Arizona lawyers in a broad range of practices to determine which lawyering skills and values they most valued. Based on the responses of 175 lawyers, here are...

One-Spacers vs. Two-Spacers

Posted on January 21, 2011
A fierce Internet debate is raging about whether writers should insert one space or two between sentences. While the discussion gives new meaning to Seinfeld's catch phrase ?a show about nothing,? it has generated strong feelings on both sides. Farhad...

nominations sought for Burton Awards

Posted on January 21, 2011
The Burton Awards for Legal Achievement recognize excellence in legal writing. For the past seven years, the Burton Awards have included an award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education. The award is given annually to an individual or group...

ALWD Scholars Workshop

Posted on January 19, 2011
Every year, the Association of Legal Writing Directors funds writing workshops for legal writing professors, in conjunction with regional legal writing conferences held throughout the U.S. The next such ALWD-funded opportunity for scholars in the field of legal writing to...

Yes, Punctuation Rules Do Exist

Posted on January 18, 2011
Are commas just ?personal things?? Diane Kraft of the University of Kentucky rebuts that common but erroneous belief in the November 2010 issue of the Kentucky Bench & Bar magazine. Explaining that English punctuation does follow rules, she lists ten...

summer research grants for legal writing professors

Posted on January 18, 2011
The Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) and the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) have announced the Legal Writing Scholarship Grants for teachers of legal research and writing for 2011. Each year, ALWD & LSI award several research grants to legal...

Global Legal Skills Conference in Chicago

Posted on January 17, 2011
The sixth Global Legal Skills Conference will take place on May 5-7, 2011 at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Persons interested in making a presentation or organizing a panel for the conference should submit proposals to the Planning...

Deadline is Friday for Proposals for the Southeast Regional Writing Conference

Posted on January 17, 2011
The 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...

LRW Posters at the AALS Annual Meeting

Posted on January 14, 2011
The Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning and Research sponsored four posters at this year?s AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Here, a viewer looks at (from left) ?Got Issues? An Empirical Study about Framing Them? (my poster); ?How the 1L...

job announcement from Washburn University School of Law

Posted on January 14, 2011
from A�da M. Alaka, Associate Professor of Law, Washburn University School of Law: Washburn University School of Law invites applications to fill one or more positions in its well-regarded, first-year Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing program. Applicants should have a...

the legal writing roller coaster

Posted on January 14, 2011
Many law schools in the U.S. start their spring semesters right after the approaching long weekend holiday. Gearing up this week for another semester of LRW, I was reminded once again of that feeling of approaching a roller coaster ride....

words that should be banned

Posted on January 14, 2011
What words should be banned? Well, politically related (e.g., refudiate) and technology-related (e.g., viral) words top the 2011 list. Thanks to Lake Superior State University for its annual compilation! (njs)

Reminder: Registration Deadline for Capital Area Legal Writing Conference is January 15

Posted on January 13, 2011
The Capital Area Legal Writing Conference Planning Committee is planning what seems to be a pretty great conference to be hosted at the George Washington University Law School on February 25 - 26, 2011. The conference will features 65 presenters...

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