Law Commons^™

Checklists: Not Just For Pilots Anymore, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Diane B. Kraft discusses how using checklists can improve an individual's legal writing skills.

"I See And I Remember; I Do And Understand": Teaching Fundamental Structure In Legal Writing Through The Use Of Samples, Judith B. Tracy

Judith B. Tracy

A first-year legal reasoning and writing curriculum is designed to introduce students to the analytical skills and organizational tools needed for the preparation of effective objective and then persuasive documents. This article describes how to use samples to enable students to self-identify a general, logical structure for a document, considering its content, its audience and purpose, and the realities of legal practice.

'The Reasonable Zone Of Right Answers': Analytical Feedback On Student Writing, Jane Kent Gionfriddo

Jane Kent Gionfriddo

This article develops the theory behind and practice of written analytical feedback on student writing for law practice. After Section I, which provides an introduction, Section II discusses the theory. It begins by addressing the function of legal writing classes in teaching students how to produce the kind of accurate and precise analysis that is the necessary foundation for documents useful in law practice. The section then goes on to discuss how this focus on analysis requires legal writing teachers to play a dual role—that of a legal educator as well as reader in law practice—in providing written critique of …

A Methodology For Mentoring Writing In Law Practice: Using Textual Clues To Provide Effective And Efficient Feedback, Jane Kent Gionfriddo, Daniel Barnett, E. Joan Blum

E. Joan Blum

Becoming a successful legal writer is a process that begins in law school and continues intensively during the beginning years of a lawyer's career. Throughout this process, in both contexts, a writer benefits enormously from feedback on his analysis, and how that analysis is conveyed, from those more experienced. Much has been written about how legal educators should respond to student written work, yet little addresses the role that supervising attorneys can play in mentoring the writing of less experienced colleagues. This article therefore proposes a methodology to help supervisor-mentors provide, in an efficient manner, effective feedback on junior lawyers' …

Teaching In Practice: Legal Writing Faculty As Expert Writing Consultants To Law Firms, E. Joan Blum, Kathleen E. Vinson

E. Joan Blum

As experts in the pedagogy and substance of legal writing, full-time legal writing faculty who serve as writing consultants to law firms help fill an increasing need for training and support of lawyers. In addition to providing a direct benefit to lawyers and their firms, this practice benefits the legal academy by providing fresh ideas for teaching and scholarship. This article discusses generally the practice of legal writing consulting in law firms by full-time legal writing faculty. The article provides background in theory and practice, addressing why law firms seek outside consultants for this type of training and support and …

What Great Writers Can Teach Lawyers And Judges: Precise, Concise, Simple And Clear, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Despite some imperfections across disciplines, advice from well-known fiction and non-fiction writers can serve lawyers and judges well because law, in its essence, is a literary profession heavily dependent on the written word. There are only two types of writing - good writing and bad writing. As poet (and Massachusetts Bar member) Archibald MacLeish recognized, good legal writing is simply good writing about a legal subject. "Lawyers would be better off," said MacLeish, "if they stopped thinking of the language of the law as a different language and realized that the art of writing for legal purposes is in no …

Peer Editing: A Comprehensive Pedagogical Approach To Maximize Assessment Opportunities, Integrate Collaborative Learning, And Achieve Desired Outcomes, Cassandra L. Hill

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Improve Your Legal Writing, Christine C. Pagano

Publications

Christine Pagano of Golden Gate University School of Law suggests some helpful resources for attorneys wishing to hone their drafting skills.

The Perils Of Hyperbole, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Diane B. Kraft makes suggestions about avoiding hyperbole in legal writing.

Judicial Opinion Writing: An Annotated Bibliography, Ruth C. Vance

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Thurgood Marshall: The Writer, Anna Hemingway, Starla J. Williams, Jennifer Lear, Ann Fruth

Starla J. Williams

This article profiles Thurgood Marshall as a writer in his roles as an advocate and social activist, a legal scholar and a Supreme Court Justice. It examines the techniques that he used as a writer to inform and persuade his audiences in his life-long endeavor to achieve equality for everyone. This examination of Marshall’s legal, scholarly, and judicial writings can help lawyers, academics, and students increase their knowledge of how the written word profoundly impacts society. The article first studies his arguments and legal strategy in two early civil rights cases, University of Maryland v. Murray and Smith v. Allwright. …

Thurgood Marshall: The Writer, Anna Hemingway, Starla J. Williams, Jennifer Lear, Ann Fruth

Jennifer M. Lear

This article profiles Thurgood Marshall as a writer in his roles as an advocate and social activist, a legal scholar and a Supreme Court Justice. It examines the techniques that he used as a writer to inform and persuade his audiences in his life-long endeavor to achieve equality for everyone. This examination of Marshall’s legal, scholarly, and judicial writings can help lawyers, academics, and students increase their knowledge of how the written word profoundly impacts society.

The article first studies his arguments and legal strategy in two early civil rights cases, University of Maryland v. Murray and Smith v. Allwright. …

Thurgood Marshall: The Writer, Anna Hemingway, Starla J. Williams, Jennifer Lear, Ann Fruth

Ann E. Fruth

This article profiles Thurgood Marshall as a writer in his roles as an advocate and social activist, a legal scholar and a Supreme Court Justice. It examines the techniques that he used as a writer to inform and persuade his audiences in his life-long endeavor to achieve equality for everyone. This examination of Marshall’s legal, scholarly, and judicial writings can help lawyers, academics, and students increase their knowledge of how the written word profoundly impacts society. The article first studies his arguments and legal strategy in two early civil rights cases, University of Maryland v. Murray and Smith v. Allwright. …

Bridging Gaps And Blurring Lines: Integrating Analysis, Writing, Doctrine, And Theory, Susan J. Hankin

Faculty Scholarship

This article is an outgrowth of the author’s participation in a July 29, 2009 panel presentation, “Change in Legal Education: Practical Skills,” at the Symposium, YES WE CArNegie: Change in Legal Education after the Carnegie Report. The article responds to the Carnegie Report’s call to “bridge the gap between analytical and practical knowledge” by presenting two models for integrating skills with doctrine in the first-year curriculum. The first model, built into the curriculum at the University of Maryland School of Law, involves teaching the first semester Legal Analysis & Writing course by pairing it with another required first-semester course, Torts, …

Paper Tectonics, Patrick O. Gudridge

Articles

No abstract provided.

When You're The Editor: Editing The Writing Of Other Lawyers Uses Skills Similar To Those Applied In Editing Your Own Writing But Also Requires 'Additional Roles', Anna Hemingway, Jennifer Lear

Anna P. Hemingway

Amos Lee's "Street Corner Preacher" Through Michel Foucault's Critique Of Scientific Knowledge: A Critique Of Legal Knowledge, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

This article will demonstrate that although students of the law, legal scholars, and practitioners rely on a relatively narrow body of “legal scholarship,” there are in fact sundry diverse sources of legal thought that deserve to be evaluated along with currently accepted legal scholarship. It will present arguments in favor of appreciating music as a unique and important source of legal commentary through which we might understand how people relate to the law—what I have called “coming to the law.” It will demonstrate that music can be uniquely transgressive and presents a powerful alternative to what Michel Foucault called “scientific …