Digital Commons Network^™

Legal Writing Mechanics: A Bibliography, Margaret Hannon

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Great legal writing is about more than mechanics. But careful attention to legal writing mechanics is nevertheless critical for effective, clear, and persuasive writing. Proper grammar, usage, and correct punctuation makes analysis clearer and therefore more effective. It also shows the reader that the writer has paid close attention to detail, which makes the reader more likely to find the writer credible. Relatedly, communicating in plain language is critical to making sure that “readers can easily find what they need, understand what they find, and use that information.” And proper citation—or even better, stylish citation—helps the reader easily understand what …

Anticipatory Edits, Patrick Barry

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Good writing, I often tell my students, is “anticipating the edits of your boss.” I then clarify that the definition of “boss” in that statement is intentionally expansive. A supervisor at work can count. A teacher in school can count. So can a valued customer or client. he key is to start thinking about two things: 1) the actual people who are going to review your writing; and 2) the likely changes they’ll make to it. By implementing those changes yourself— before the document ever hits your boss’s desk or inbox—you can save them a lot of time and cognitive …

Acknowledgements As A Window Into Legal Academia, Jonathan Tietz, W. Nicholson Price Ii

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Legal scholarship in the United States is an oddity—an institution built on student editorship, a lack of peer review, and a dramatically high proportion of solo authorship. It is often argued that this makes legal scholarship fundamentally different from scholarship in other fields, which is largely peer-reviewed by academics. We use acknowledgments in biographical footnotes from law review articles to probe the nature of legal knowledge co-production and de facto peer review in the legal literature. Using a survey and a textual analysis of about thirty thousand law review articles from 2008 to 2017, we examined the nature of knowledge …

An“Astonishingly Excellent” Solution To Super-Fake Narratives, Cathren Page

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Persuasion studies indicate that facts and logic have likely never persuaded people. Rather, people typically hold “deep frame” beliefs, and story persuades them. People then use facts and logic to justify their beliefs.

While this potentially persuasive “fake news” itself is old, the widespread dissemination of fake news via bots is new. Donald Trump’s campaign benefitted from these bots and from an electoral college map more favorable to Republicans. But these super-powers were not his only strengths, the Trump campaign wielded the power of superhero storytelling techniques.

So, faced with an army of bots, a superhero story, and an unfavorably …

Exploring Diversity With A "Culture Box" In First-Year Legal Writing, Ann N. Sinsheimer

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Studying law is in many ways like studying another culture. Students often feel as though they are learning a new language with unfamiliar vocabulary and different styles of communication. Throughout their legal education, students are also exposed to a profession comprised of unique traditions and expectations. As a result, learning law takes time and energy. It can be both engaging and frustrating and may even challenge some of students’ values and belief systems. To ease her students’ transition to law school, the author starts her course each year with a “culture box” exercise, which encourages students to examine who they …

Automatically Extracting Meaning From Legal Texts: Opportunities And Challenges, Kevin D. Ashley

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This paper examines impressive new applications of legal text analytics in automated contract review, litigation support, conceptual legal information retrieval, and legal question answering against the backdrop of some pressing technological constraints. First, artificial intelligence (Al) programs cannot read legal texts like lawyers can. Using statistical methods, Al can only extract some semantic information from legal texts. For example, it can use the extracted meanings to improve retrieval and ranking, but it cannot yet extract legal rules in logical form from statutory texts. Second, machine learning (ML) may yield answers, but it cannot explain its answers to legal questions or …

Using Ai To Analyze Patent Claim Indefiniteness, Dean Alderucci, Kevin D. Ashley

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In this Article, we describe how to use artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to partially automate a type of legal analysis, determining whether a patent claim satisfies the definiteness requirement. Although fully automating such a high-level cognitive task is well beyond state-of-the-art AI, we show that AI can nevertheless assist the decision maker in making this determination. Specifically, the use of custom AI technology can aid the decision maker by (1) mining patent text to rapidly bring relevant information to the decision maker attention, and (2) suggesting simple inferences that can be drawn from that information.

We begin by summarizing the …

The Rule Of Three, Patrick Barry

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Judges use the Rule of Three. Practitioners use the Rule of Three. And so do all manner of legal academics. Yet although many people seem to have an intuitive feel for how useful this rhetorical move is, no extended explanation of its mechanics and variety of forms exists. This essay offers that explanation. It begins with an introduction to the more straightforward form of the rule of three, which simply involves arranging information not in twos or fours or any other set of numbers-but rather in the trusty, melodic structure of threes. It then moves on to a closer look …

Freedom In Structure: Helping Foreign-Trained And International Graduate Students Develop Thesis Statements By Component, Elizabeth R. Baldwin

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This article explains how foreign-trained and international graduate students can use a thesis development template to find and articulate narrow, novel, non-obvious, and useful claims for their final, academic papers in law. These students, in particular, are in need of clear direction and methods for crafting well-developed claims (or thesis statements), given that many are non-native speakers of English who trained in different legal and educational systems with different expectations about what constitutes good academic writing—in any genre, let alone law. Through the use of a thesis development template (adapted from writing advice by Joseph M. Williams and Eugene Volokh), …

Stranger Than Fiction: How Lawyers Can Accurately And Realistically Tell A True Story By Using Fiction Writers’ Techniques That Make Fiction Seem More Realistic Than Reality, Cathren Page

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This Article differs from other articles on related topics in that it focuses broadly on including specific details to establish an overall sense of reality. In contrast, in his article, This is Not the Whole Truth, Professor Steve Johansen discusses those details that can ethically be omitted; this Article, however, is about which select details to include rather than to omit. Although some articles have focused on details regarding specific objects, such as an obtuse object or an endowed object, this Article covers a wider category of details that applies throughout the narrative as opposed to details that surface only …

Debating Is The Constitution Special?, Richard Primus, Kevin M. Stack, Christopher Serkin, Nelson Tebbe

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In 1890, Louis Brandeis wrote The Right to Privacy. Within a matter of years, the courts began adopting his theory, creating a newly articulated legal right. This article likely represented the high-water mark of legal academia in terms of real world impact. In recent years, the academy has lost much of its relevance. Chief Justice Roberts ridiculed academic work, suggesting that legal scholarship has become esoteric and irrelevant. This should not be the case. The quality of legal scholars is higher than it has ever been—young scholars now often enter the academy with doctoral degrees in related fields. Likewise, technology …

Lawyers At Work: A Study Of The Reading, Writing, And Communication Practices Of Legal Professionals, Ann N. Sinsheimer, David J. Herring

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This paper reports the results of a three-year ethnographic study of attorneys in the workplace. The authors applied ethnographic methods to identify how junior associates in law firm settings engaged in reading and writing tasks in their daily practice. The authors were able to identify the types of texts junior associates encountered in the workplace and to isolate the strategies these attorneys used to read and compose texts.

The findings suggest that lawyering is fundamentally about reading. The attorneys observed for this study read constantly, encountering a large variety of texts and engaging in many styles of reading, including close …

Not Your Mother's Will: Gender, Language, And Wills, Karen J. Sneddon

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“Boys will be boys, but girls must be young ladies” is an echoing patriarchal refrain from the past. Formal equality has not produced equality in all areas, as demonstrated by the continuing wage gap. Gender bias lingers and can be identified in language. This Article focuses on Wills, one of the oldest forms of legal documents, to explore the intersection of gender and language. With conceptual antecedents in pre-history, written Wills found in Ancient Egyptian tombs embody the core characteristics of modern Wills. The past endows the drafting and implementation of Wills with a wealth of traditions and experiences. The …

Beyond Contrastive Rhetoric: Helping International Lawyers Use Cohesive Devices In U.S. Legal Writing, Elizabeth R. Baldwin

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This Article attempts to use linguistics, specifically text analysis and pragmatics, to help explain how and why lawyers who are non-native speakers of English (NNS) struggle with cohesion in their U.S. legal writing. Then in light of that discussion, it offers a four-step, receptive and productive exercise to engage students in contrastive analysis of cohesive features across languages and cultures.

It begins by distinguishing coherence (top-down flow related to rhetorical preferences and organization of content and argument) from cohesion (bottom-up flow related to the surface features that exhibit connections between clauses). As background, it explores the role of cohesion in …

What Is "Good Legal Writing" And Why Does It Matter?, Mark Osbeck

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Law schools face increasing pressure to improve instruction in practice-oriented skills. One of the most important of these skills is legal writing. The existing literature on legal writing contains various rules and suggestions as to how legal writers can improve their writing skills. Yet it lacks an adequate theoretical account of the fundamental nature of good legal writing. As a result, legal writers are left without a solid conceptual framework to ground the individual rules and suggestions. This Article attempts to fill the theoretical void in the literature by offering a systematic analysis of what it is for a legal …

Legal Interpretation: The Window Of The Text As Transparent, Opaque, Or Translucent, George H. Taylor

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It is a common metaphor that the text is a window onto the world that it depicts. In legal interpretation, the metaphor has been developed in two ways – the legal text as transparent or opaque – and the Article proposes a third – the legal text as translucent. The claim that the legal text is transparent has been associated with more liberal methodological approaches. According to this view (often articulated by critics), the legal text does not markedly delimit meaning. Delimitation comes from the interpreters. By contrast, stress on the opacity of the legal text comes from those who …

The Technology Of Law, Bernard J. Hibbitts

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This paper argues that contemporary fascination with the law of technology (IP, cyberlaw, etc.) has led us to overlook the fundamental impact of the "technology of law," and offers suggestions for creating "neterate" lawyers more comfortable with and cognizant of technology itself. The author describes how the legal news service JURIST implements many of these suggestions and provides a unique learning experience for its law student staffers.

Writing To Learn Law And Writing In Law: An Intellectual Property Illustration, Michael J. Madison

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This essay, prepared as part of a Symposium on teaching intellectual property law, describes a method of combining substantive law teaching with a species of what is commonly called "skills" training. The method involves assessing students not via traditional final exams but instead via research memos patterned after assignments that junior lawyers might encounter in actual legal practice. The essay grounds the method in the theoretical disposition known generally as "writing to learn." It argues that students are likely to learn intellectual property law effectively if they learn to practice as intellectual property lawyers, and specifically to write as intellectual …

Derrick Bell's Narratives As Parables, George H. Taylor

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Use of the narrative form in law and legal analysis remains controversial, especially by advocates of critical race theory. Critics maintain that narratives can distort if they are not sufficiently based on empirical fact or reason. Narratives, the claim goes, must be evaluated on the basis of objective standards. My Article argues that this posture critical of narrative is mistaken. I contend that to comprehend how narratives should be interpreted, their literary character must first be understood.

The Article examines the narratives of Derrick Bell, the preeminent critical race and narrative scholar, and maintains that Bell's narratives should be read …

The Ten Commandments As Secular Historic Artifact Or Sacred Religious Text: Using Modrovich V. Allegheny County To Illustrate How Words Create Reality, Ann N. Sinsheimer

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In his essay, The 'Ideograph: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology', Michael Calvin McGee proposes that our system of beliefs is shaped through and expressed by words. We are consciously and unconsciously conditioned and controlled by the words we hear and use. Words carry ideology and convey and create meaning. Like Chinese characters, words are 'ideographs that 'signify' and 'contain' a unique ideological commitment', that is frequently unquestioned. McGee also suggests that by understanding that a single word can carry ideology and that ideology can be expressed in a single word, we are better able to expose and evaluate ideology …

Some Examples Of Using Legal Relations Language In The Legal Domain: Applied Deontic Logic, Layman E. Allen

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The fundamental concept of the LEGAL RELATIONS Language (LRL) is the recursively-defined notion of LEGAL RELATION (LR). As LR is defined here, there is an infinite number of different LEGAL RELATIONS, and LRL is a language for precisely and completely describing each of those infinite number of dfferent LEGAL RELATIONS. With its robust collection of dfferent names, one for each of the different LEGAL RELATIONS, LRL provides adequate vocabulary for (1) describing every possible legal state of affairs, (2) accounting for every possible change from one legal state of affairs to another, (3) representing every possible legal rule, and (4) …

Why I Write, James Boyd White

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It is a great honor for me to speak to you on this occasion, celebrating the publication of such an original and important book. It is a pleasure of a different kind as well, for Lash LaRue is an old and good friend, and I welcome the chance to join with others in congratulating him.

Making Motions: The Embodiment Of Law In Gestures, Bernard J. Hibbitts

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In contemporary America, the locus of legal meaning is habitually deemed to be the written word. This article pushes our conception of law’s “text” beyond its traditional inscripted bounds by focusing on physical gesture as a legal instrumentality. The few studies of legal gesture undertaken to date have explained its prominence in various legal systems and cultural environments, the significance of specific legal gestures in specific historic contexts, and the depiction of legal gestures in particular manuscripts or other specific physical settings, but no one has considered the general functions of legal gesture as a modality.

In an effort to …

Lowering One's Cites: A (Sort Of) Review Of The University Of Chicago Manual Of Legal Citation, Mary I. Coombs

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No abstract provided.

Discipline Of Clear Expression, Donald L. Burnett Jr.

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No abstract provided.

One Use Of Computerized Instructional Gaming In Legal Education: To Better Understand The Rich Logical Structure Of Legal Rules And Improve Legal Writing, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon

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This article describes an innovation in legal education and speculates about its importance and effectiveness as an educational tool. The speculations about its potential use, however, are ones that each legal educator will be able to test individually to determine the effectiveness of this use of microcomputers to improve legal education. The computer software that permits the innovation to be used will be available to interested persons by the time that this article is published.

The Need For Clear Structure In 'Plain Language' Legal Drafting, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm

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Language is not simple. To pretend otherwise is to mislead. In practice the aspect that is handled most ineptly in written legal materials is the structure. The focus of this article is upon structure and how to improve it. At the outset, let one thing be absolutely clear. In seeking to achieve clarity of expression, those who have no more to recommend than short sentences, simple words, and readability formulas are offering a cracker in circumstances where a full gourmet feast is gleaming in the chef's eye for those with the wit but to ask for the menu. To practice …

Scholarship On Soviet Family Law In Perspective, Whitmore Gray

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The radical changes in the norms of Soviet family law over the past fifty years have reflected the convulsions of Soviet society as well as the revisions of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. This paper is a commentary on the writing in this field by Americans in particular, and by other non-Soviets in general. In view of the volume of writing in this field, it has been necessary to limit discussion in the text to a few representative articles illustrating a few of the subject matters treated and various typical approaches employed. The topic is a particularly timely one, for new, comprehensive Principles of …