Law Commons^™

Beyond The Basics: Lesser-Used Punctuation Marks, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff, Jason G. Dykstra

Jason Dykstra

Occasionally legal writing can benefit from a few lesser-used punctuation marks. This article focuses on the proper use of the question mark, slash, and parentheses in legal writing. Used sparingly and correctly, these marks can enhance the clarity of your legal writing without sacrificing a formal tone or professional style. [excerpt]

Legal Citation Part I: The Basics Of Legal Citation, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Legal citation conveys information succinctly and efficiently by adhering to four principles. Thus, legal citation follows the 1) core identification principles, 2) minimum content principles, 3) compacting principles, and 4) formatting principles. This article looks at each. [excerpt]

Legal Citation Part Ii: Tips & Tricks To Avoid Common Errors, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff, Jason G. Dykstra

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

This article goes over quick and easy tips to help one avoid the most common citation typeface and abbreviation errors often seen in practitioner filings.

Index To Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff's Advocate Articles, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

This document functions as an index to help readers to navigate Professor Fordyce-Ruff's Advocate column articles better.

Beyond The Basics: Lesser-Used Punctuation Marks, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff, Jason G. Dykstra

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Occasionally legal writing can benefit from a few lesser-used punctuation marks. This article focuses on the proper use of the question mark, slash, and parentheses in legal writing. Used sparingly and correctly, these marks can enhance the clarity of your legal writing without sacrificing a formal tone or professional style. [excerpt]

Legal Citation Part Iii: Using Citation To Convey Textual Meaning, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff, Jason G. Dykstra

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Remember, at our core, attorneys are advocates, and one of the purposes of citation is to prove to the reader that she can trust one's research-to prove that the law is what one states it is and that it works the way one stated it does.

In addition to understanding the language of citation and using the correct form, citation can also increase the level of trust one's reader will have in one's positions in two ways: signals and explanatory parentheticals.

Getting It Right: Title Ix's Role In Adjudicating Sexual Assault Claims, Mary Margaret "Meg" Penrose

Meg Penrose

Sexual assault is a crime. We have a serious issue in the United States with sexual assault and sexual harassment. We are seeing this play out right now, and I think the “Me Too” campaign has brought important attention to this issue. An issue that impacts not only our college residence halls, but, as we have seen, the halls of Congress. Serious people are not debating whether sexual assault and sexual harassment pose a societal problem. Rather, serious people are debating how to adequately address these issues without compromising fairness to all involved.

To That Or Not To That: When To Use And When To Omit "That", Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Using or omitting that can be confusing. Sometimes a sentence needs a that, sometimes a sentence doesn't need a that, and sometimes using that is optional. This article addresses some tips to help one understand when that is necessary, when it is optional, and when one might want to use that even if it is optional.

Weird Science: The Empircial Study Of Legal Writing/Describing Law’S Enterprise: Moving From Theory To Research Question To Research Design And Implementation, Brian Larson

Brian Larson

How We Built A Scholarly Working Group Devoted To Classical Legal Rhetoric (And How You Can Do The Same Thing With Other Legal Writing Subjects), Brian Larson, Kirsten K. Davis, Lori D. Johnson, Ted Becker, Susan E. Provenzano

Brian Larson

A Call For Strengthening The Role Of Comparative Legal Analysis In The United States, Irene Calboli

Irene Calboli

This Essay highlights the importance of comparative legal analysis with particular emphasis on the role that this methodology could play for intellectual property scholarship in the United States. In particular, this Essay suggests that U.S. scholars could consider turning with more frequency to comparative legal analysis as an additional methodology to use in their research. Yet, the objective of this Essay is not to suggest that U.S. scholars should engage in comparative legal analysis in lieu of other types of research methodologies. Instead, this Essay simply supports that comparative legal analysis could play a larger role compared to the one …

Who Wants To Be A Muggle? The Diminished Legitimacy Of Law As Magic, Mark Edwin Burge

Mark Edwin Burge

In the Harry Potter world, the magical population lives among the non-magical Muggle population, but we Muggles are largely unaware of them. This secrecy is by elaborate design and is necessitated by centuries-old hostility to wizards by the non-magical majority. The reasons behind this hostility, when combined with the similarities between Harry Potter-stylemagic and American law, make Rowling’s novels into a cautionary tale for the legal profession that it not treat law as a magic unknowable to non-lawyers. Comprehensibility — as a self-contained, normative value in the enactment interpretation, and practice of law — is given short-shrift by the legal …

Chinese And American Forum On Legal Information And Law Libraries: Highlights From Hangzhou, Ning Han, Evelyn Ma, Wei Luo

Ning Han

The Fifth Biennial Conference of the Chinese and American Forum on Legal Information and Law Libraries (CAFLL) was held in Hangzhou, China, June 1-2, 2017. More than sixty law school deans, law librarians, and law professors from more than fifty law schools in China attended the conference. Overseas attendees included more than twenty-five law librarians and library directors from Germany, Canada, as well as the presidents of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and International Association of Law Libraries (IALL).

Toward A Universal Understanding Of The Value Of Legal Research Education (Reviewing Caroline Osborne, The State Of Legal Research Education: A Survey Of First-Year Legal Research Programs, Or Why Johnny And Jane Cannot Research), Elizabeth Adelman

Elizabeth Adelman

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Gap: Transistioning Law School Legal Writing Skills To Practicing Law, Jason G. Dykstra

Jason Dykstra

Stylistically ... law school legal writing differs somewhat from writing in practice. ...This article ... is designed to help transition the legal writing skills honed in law school to the practice of Law. [excerpt]

Good Old-Fashioned Editing, Jason G. Dykstra

Jason Dykstra

While not perfect, the spelling and grammar review features of word processing software can prove good editing tools. Similarly, find and replace features can help ferret out any lurking malapropisms. These searches can avert the potential embarrassment of quoting a "statue" in the Idaho Code in a brief filed in "Canon County' However, electronic editing does not supplant the good old-fashioned printing-a-fresh-draft- and-reading-keenly style of editing. This article focuses on a few tips to optimize the effectiveness of editing text in print. [excerpt]

Govern Yourself Accordingly: Crafting Effective Demand Letters, Jason G. Dykstra

Jason Dykstra

An effective demand letter can expediently resolve a dispute without litigation. But a poorly conceived demand letter can accelerate a dispute toward litigation and even generate negative publicity. Like all correspondence, demand letters need to be tailored in tone and content for varied audience, both the intended recipient and other foreseeable recipients.

Beyond the intended recipient, the audience for a demand letter could encompass insurance adjusters, in-house counsel, and perhaps even the public via social media or press coverage. Therefore, an effective demand letter should not only be polite but firm, but also tell a persuasive story that evokes incredulity …

Enhancing The Effectiveness Of Your Legal Writing With Plain English, Jason G. Dykstra

Jason Dykstra

This article focuses on areas where busy practitioners can aspire for plain English and not only improve their writing but possibly avoid a few pitfalls. As Justice Brandeis once remarked[, "T]here is no such thing as good writing. There is only good rewriting" So here are three areas to focus on as you rewrite: minimizing initialisms, acronyms, and defined terms; losing legal jargon and cutting clutter; and balancing legal terms and precision. [excerpt]

To Verb Or Not To Verb, Jason G. Dykstra

Jason Dykstra

The metamorphosis of nouns into verbs, commonly called verbing or verbification, reflects a time-honored tradition in the English language of coining new uses from familiar words. Linguists use the term "functional shifting" to describe the conversion of nouns into verbs and vice versa. Verbing is common. By one estimate, about twenty percent of all verbs in English derive from nouns. Almost any noun can be verbed. Some verbed nouns are easy to identify because they don't change form when they become verbs: stump, mouse and torpedo. But, the transformation of other nouns into verbs requires the addition of an -ize, …

Keeping Pace With Technology-Driven Profession, Jodi Nafzger

Jodi Nafzger

With the increasing use of E-discovery and paperless judicial systems, members of the legal profession must consider new methods for managing the overwhelming volume of information and be competent with the emerging technologies at the center of modern law practice. It is also increasingly clear that law schools must teach the technology of law practice. The ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct call for law school curriculum which familiarizes aspiring lawyers with important technology tools. With practical skills training in the use of effective technology tools, the next generation of lawyers can bring an enhanced mastery of business and technology …

What Don’T You Know And How Will You Learn It? (Reviewing Susan Nevelow Mart, The Algorithm As A Human Artifact: Implications For Legal [Re]Search, 109 Law Libr. J. 387), Elizabeth Adelman

Elizabeth Adelman

No abstract provided.

Hand Annotation And Reliability: Corpus Linguistic Approaches To Teaching And Studying Writing, Brian Larson

Brian Larson

Some February Fun: F Words, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

I’ve wanted to write another column on word pairs for a while. 1 I decided that this month is it. Let’s celebrate the shortest month of the year by looking at “F” words[--first/firstly, farther/further, feign/feint, fictional/fictitious, flair/flare, flammable/inflammable, flaunt/flout, forbear/forebear, founder/flounder, forgo/forego, fortuitous/fortunate]. [excerpt]

Ten Steps To Build Better Briefs: Part Ii, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Last month we started the 10 steps to building better briefs. We covered the first five, finishing the sentence level tips and beginning the paragraph level tips. This month, we will continue that discussion, by finishing up the tips for better paragraphs and finally getting to the tips for the entire brief. [excerpt]

Spring Cleaning Part Ii, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

... [I]n the spirit of spring-cleaning, let’s look at some writing “rules” you can jettison to the trash heap.

Ten Steps To Build Better Briefs: Part I, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

... [C]onstructing a better brief can be done in ten (easy) steps — some focusing on sentences, some on paragraphs, and some on the entire brief. [excerpt]

Verbs: The Basics On Tense And Voice, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

... [V]erbs have voice, mood, tense, number, and person. There are regular verbs and irregular verbs; a verb can be linking, transitive, or intransitive, depending on the types of objects or complements it can take; verbs can be auxiliary or main verbs; verbs even stop functioning as verbs and appear as verbal phrases or gerunds. Whew! Covering all that would be way too much grammar for one month. So, here’s a refresher on the basics of verb tense and voice. [excerpt]

Taking The 30,000-Foot View: Seeing What You've Written, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

In thinking about a topic for this column, I took a moment to look back over what I've covered since I started writing for The Advocate. I saw a huge range of topics-- word choice to punctuation to parts of speech to document design. I've even covered proofing techniques. I saw one huge hole, however. I've never written about how to edit to ensure your legal writing is complete. So for this month I'll explore a little bit of why self-editing is so difficult, followed by some discrete tasks each legal writer can use to ensure that a document is …

Typography Matters: Document Design, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

This month, I am turning to what I hope is [a] ... helpful topic: document design. Sit back and enjoy learning more about spaces after periods, cueing devices, point size, justification, and paragraph breaks. [excerpt]

Three Tips For Concise Writing, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

I'm just wrapping up the first unit of my legal writing class. During this time every year, I introduce my students to the 4 C's-four characteristics that should be present in every legal document.' Yes, every legal document should be clear, correct, complete, and concise.

In our class, we emphasize these principles repeatedly. All legal writers should strive to attain the 4 C's. To that end, this month I offer some tips for concision. After all, I don't know anyone who isn't a little too wordy in the first draft.

Let's look at three tips to remove wordiness that I …