Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

An Underestimated Showcase Of Student Scholarship: Law School Institutional Repositories, Dajiang Nie

Duquesne Law Review

Law schools have been using institutional repositories as a showcase for law journals and faculty scholarly achievements for a long time, but law school institutional repositories fail to collect student scholarship regularly. Aspects of law school institutional repositories make no sense when directly benefiting both students and law schools and failing to display student scholarship. This Article examines student scholarship in law school institutional repositories, analyzing its current status, advantages, and keys to success. The Article shows that law school institutional repositories underappreciate student scholarship, and the content of student repositories also lacks diversity. This approach impairs the positive impacts …

Teaching The Art And Craft Of Drafting Public Law: Statutes, Rules, And More, J. Lyn Entrikin, Richard K. Neumann Jr.

Duquesne Law Review

For centuries, lawyers have been notorious for long-winded writing filled with legalese, hyper-technical expression, and convoluted sentence structure. Legal writing in memos and briefs has been characterized as wordy, unclear, pompous, and just plain dull. Legal drafting, defined as the specialized skill of creating legal rules, is even more fraught with problems. In particular, no standardized, consistently used methodology exists in the United States for drafting federal and state statutes, agency regulations, and court rules.

In 1954, the late Professor Reed Dickerson observed, "It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of knowing how to prepare an adequate legal instrument. …

Experiential Learning And Assessment In The Era Of Donald Trump, Jamie R. Abrams

Duquesne Law Review

Law teaching is turning a critical corner with the implementation of new ABA accreditation standards requiring greater skills development, experiential learning, and student assessment. Years of debate and discourse preceded the adoption of these ABA Standards, followed by a surge in programming, conferencing, and listserv activity to prepare to implement these standards effectively. Missing from the dialogue about effective implementation of standards has been thoughtful consideration of how implementing these requirements will intersect with the challenges, realities, opportunities, and complexities of political divisiveness and polarization so prevalent in society and university campuses today.

Law schools are notably implementing these pedagogical …

Writing The Law: Developing The 'Citizen Lawyer' Identity Through Legislative, Statutory, And Rule Drafting Courses, Ann L. Schiavone

Duquesne Law Review

At the time of the American Founding, Thomas Jefferson, among others, viewed lawyers as the class of citizens most suited to lead the American institutions of government, as well as preserve and protect them. Jefferson valued the ideal of the "Citizen Lawyer" who would have a broad liberal education, experiential learning, and be capable of using knowledge of the law to promote the public good.

In more recent years, American law schools have been criticized for failing to achieve many of these goals first envisioned by Jefferson. Particularly, law schools have often failed to promote strong public service identities in …

Teaching Public Policy Drafting In Law School: One Professor's Approach, Lisa A. Rich

Duquesne Law Review

This article provides an overview of the Drafting for Public Policy course offered at the Texas A&M University School of Law. The article addresses the theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings of the course, including how such a course easily encompasses the teaching of cultural context and awareness, as well as professional identity, and encourages students to engage deeply in the policymaking process. It also explores the continued relevance of the work of Harold D. Lasswell, as well as that of Myres McDougal and Anthony Kronman. These works, from 1943 and 1993 respectively, resonate now because they called on law schools to …

Capital Lawyering & Legislative Clinic, Rex D. Frazier

Duquesne Law Review

This article outlines an approach for teaching law students about advocacy beyond the judicial branch, with particular emphasis on legislative advocacy. Given the long and well-documented shift away from the judicial branch as the primary source of original public law, it is critical to teach law students that legislative advocacy is more than just an "alternative"o r "non-traditional" legal career option and, instead, is one which regularly involves "real lawyering." Just as law students learn practical trial skills through moot court, shouldn't they learn practical legislative advocacy skills through simulated legislative hearings? Further, can law students move beyond traditional approaches …

Fifth Colonial Frontier Legal Writing Conference Drafting Statutes And Rules: Pedagogy, Practice, And Politics, Jan M. Levine

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Law And Economics Critique Of The Law Review System, Timothy T. Lau

Duquesne Law Review

The law review system prizes placement of articles in highlyranked journals, and the optimum method to ensure the best placement, which many scholars have intuited, is a saturation submission strategy of submitting articles to as many journals as possible. However, there has neither been an explanation as to what incentivizes this submission strategy nor any analysis as to what happens to scholars who cannot afford this strategy. This article uses a law and economics approach to study the incentive structures of the law review system, and identifies two features of the system that encourage saturation submission and punishes the poorly-resourced: …

Fourth Colonial Frontier Legal Writing Conference: Teaching The Academically Underprepared Law Student [Foreword], Jan M. Levine

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are We There Yet?: Aligning The Expectations And Realities Of Gaining Competency In Legal Writing, Sherri Lee Keene

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreward, Kirsha Trychta

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Changing Gears To Meet The "New Normal" In Legal Education, Courtney G. Lee

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Do Med Schools Do It Better?: Improving Law School Admissions By Adopting A Medical School Admissions Model, Rebecca C. Flanagan

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Of Moby Dick And Tartar Sauce: The Academically Underprepared Law Student And The Curse Of Overconfidence, Ruth Vance, Susan Stuart

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eye Of The Beholder: How Perception Management Can Counter Stereotype Threat Among Struggling Law Students, Catherine Christopher

Duquesne Law Review

When individuals belong to a group about which there is a negative stereotype, their fear of confirming that stereotype will often suppress their performance ability. This phenomenon is known as "stereotype threat," and it has been documented with regard to gender, race, age, social class, athletic ability, and any number of other classifications, so long as a negative stereotype exists about that group.

Law students with low grade point averages (GPAs) are at greater risk than their higher-GPA peers of failing the bar exam, and they know it. Left unchecked, the pressure of this correlation the stereotype threat-may itself depress …

The Cure For The Distracted Mind: Why Law Schools Should Teach Mindfulness, Shailini Jandial George

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Drawing Inspiration From The Flipped Classroom Model: An Integrated Approach To Academic Support For The Academically Underprepared Law Student, Susan D. Landrum

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Empowering Law Students To Overcome Extreme Public Speaking Anxiety: Why "Just Be It" Works And "Just Do It" Doesn't, Heidi K. Brown

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Tethered Generation: Next Gens Come To Law School, Mary Ann Becker

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Before They Even Start: Hope And Incoming 1ls, Barbara J. Brunner

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Would You Say That To Your Children? Enhancing Learning Through Improved Communication, Karin Mika

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Teaching Legislative Drafting In Law School: A Model Course, Robert J. Hopperton

Duquesne Law Review

Law Schools traditionally have failed to provide adequate instruction in legislative drafting and this failure has been the subject of recent criticism. The author, a teacher of legal writing, advances for consideration his model course in legislative drafting as a means of increasing writing abilities and applying analytical skills. The author discusses the operation of his course and has included many of the materials he has developed for use in the course.