Law Commons^™

Irlafarc! Surveying The Language Of Legal Writing, Terrill Pollman, Judith M. Stinson

Maine Law Review

Language, like law, is a living thing. It grows and changes. It both reflects and shapes the communities that use it. The language of the community of legal writing professors demonstrates this process. Legal writing professors, who stand at the heart of an emerging discipline in the legal academy, are creating new terms, or neologisms, as they struggle to articulate principles of legal analysis, organizational paradigms conventional to legal writing, and other legal writing concepts. This new vocabulary can be both beneficial and detrimental. It can be beneficial because it expands the substance of an emerging discipline. It also can …

Sanctions For Evading Maximum Page Limits On Court Filings, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Judge Marrero joins a growing lineup of judges who have imposed or threatened sanctions on counsel for attempting to evade court rules that set maximum page limits on briefs, memoranda, and other filings. Orders and reported opinions catalogue various strategies, including these: presenting the main text in a font smaller than the court's required font; presenting the main text with spacing less than required double spacing; using excessive footnotes, often single-spaced or in small fonts; or narrowing required margins on the sides, the top, or the bottom of pages.

The Structured Writing Group: A Different Writing Center?, Brian N. Larson, Christopher Soper

Brian Larson

This article describes the objectives, development, and some preliminary results of a program the authors led at the University of Minnesota Law School in academic year 2014-15. They wanted the “Structured Writing Group” (SWG) project to achieve some outcomes traditionally associated with writing centers: first, improving the student writing process by facilitating collaboration with a writing expert; and second, exposing students to additional audiences for their writing. We added a third goal of improving the experience and performance of multilingual students in the legal writing program.

Cleaning Up Quotations, Jack Metzler

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

The Pesky Serial Comma, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

The "serial comma" - sometimes called the "Oxford comma" or the "Harvard comma"- comes immediately before a conjunction that separates the last of three or more elements in a series. For example, consider the trio "ready, willing, and able." Consider too "win, lose, or draw." The serial comma is the one immediately before the "and" or the "or." In statutes or private arrangements, a comma's presence (or, as in O'Connor, its absence) may hold high stakes for litigants.

References To Spring's Championship Sports In Judicial Opinions And Written Advocacy, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

t'he courts' own careful use of sports references invites advocates to carefully use sports references in the-i briefs and other written submissions. With the post-season playoffs and the World Series holding sports fans' attention, I wrote in the journal's September-October 2016 issue about the role of baseball references in judicial opinions and written advocacy. As attention turned to post-season playoffs and the Super Bowl, I wrote in the January-February 2017 issue about football references.

The trilogy of articles concludes here with sampling of judges' recent references to four sports that hit high notes every Spring Basketball, with the National Basketball …

What's Your Story? Every Famous Mark Has One: Persuasion In Trademark Opposition Briefs, Candace Hays

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

A key contention of legal writing scholarship is that the legal resolution is rooted in storytelling. The law consists of an endless telling and retelling of stories. Clients tell stories to their lawyers, who must figure out how to frame their client’s narrative into a legal context. Lawyers retell their clients’ stories to judges using pleadings, motions, and legal briefs. Judges and administrators retell these stories in the form of an opinion or verdict.

Storytelling in the legal context is an important element of persuasion. For the purpose of this comment, legal storytelling is defined as the use of fiction-writing …

New Wine In Old Wineskins: Metaphor And Legal Research, Amy E. Sloan, Colin Starger

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

This Essay argues that conceptualizing emerging legal technologies using inherited research metaphors is like pouring new wine in old wineskins—it simply doesn’t work. This Essay proposes to replace outdated research metaphors with updated metaphors that can provide the fresh wineskin to conceptualize current research challenges.

When Less Is More: An Ideological Rhetorical Analysis Of Selected Aba Standards On Curricula And Faculty, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

This chapter undertakes an ideological rhetorical analysis of several key provisions of Chapters 3 and 4 of the American Bar Association’s Standards for Approval of Law Schools, specifically, the interrelated provisions that regulate the curriculum and specify the required conditions of employment for the faculty of a law school. The analysis of selected ABA Standards regulating curricula and faculty supports rhetorical analyst Sonja Foss’s conclusion that the “dominant ideology controls what participants see as natural or obvious by establishing the norm. . . . [and] provides a sense that things are the way they have to be as it asserts …

References To Football In Judicial Opinions And Written Advocacy, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Writing for the Court,Justice Elena Kagan explained that the dual bases of liability, recited in Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933, are not "an invitation to Monday morning quarterback an issuer's opinions" if the opinions later prove incorrect. The Court thus spurned second-guessing from the relative comfort of hindsight. With her nod to football, justice Kagan employed a rhetorical technique that justices and lower federal and state judges have employed with increased frequency since the early 1970s. In cases with no claims or defenses concerning sports, written opinions help decide or explain issues of law or fact with …

Analogical Reasoning, Susan A. Mcmahon, Sonya G. Bonneau

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This chapter from our book Legal Writing in Context aims to demystify analogical reasoning for law students.

Update Your Bookmarks! Great Sites For Effective Research, Nancy E. Vettorello

Articles

There are more than one billion websites available online. Many are useful tools for attorneys, so it makes sense to review and refresh your favorite bookmarks regularly. While none of the many free sites offer the sophisticated search abilities of fee-based research services, a few minutes spent exploring free sites can help researchers significantly narrow their searches once they turn to a fee-based system. Remember to always take advantage of the advancesearch option when available on a free site. Free sites are offering increasingly sophisticated search options, such as Boolean and proximity searches, which were previously exclusive to paid services.