Legal Writing

The Way We Speak
Recently, The New York Times published an interesting article about regional and social dialects in the United States -- especially the strong New York accent portrayed in movies and on TV shows (the article specificly mentions MTV's "Jersey Shore" as exemplifying the use of a particular dialect by Italian-Americans)...

Harry Reids Light-Skinned / Negro Dialect Comment
The complaints about Sen. Reid?s quote (?He was wowed by Obama?s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama ? a ?light-skinned? African American ?with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,? as he later put it privately?) strike me as [...

Do missing Somali men have an al-Qaida connection
NPR has done a good job following the story of several Somali-American men, younger guys, who were apparently disappearing in the Minneapolis area. Well, they weren't disappearing so much as being shipped to Somalia for militia training so they could...

Courts - "Former U.S. prosecutor practiced on suspended law license"
Here is a story from yesterday, posted by WRAL.com in Raleigh, NC. It begins:Raleigh, N.C. ? The validity of some...

Progress Energy gift to help build law clinic (Philanthropy Journal)
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Progress Energy, a Raleigh-based utility company, committed $150,000 to build the Senior Law Clinic, an initiative by the law school at Campbell University to provide legal services to low-income senior citizens in the Raleigh area.

Writing Dialogue In Accents and Dialect
"W'en old man Rabbit say 'scoot,' dey scooted, en w'en ole Miss Rabbit say 'scat,' dey scatted. Dey did dat. En dey kep' der cloze clean, and day ain't had no smut on der nose nudder...