Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Persuasion Principles For Lawyers, Jarome E. Gautreaux

Mercer Law Review

Lawyers spend a lot of time trying to persuade others. In this, they are not unlike most every other human being. Whether one spouse is trying to get the other to attend a sporting event they normally wouldn’t enjoy, or a car salesperson is trying to convince a potential buyer to buy the latest model convertible, or a doctor is trying to get their patient to stop smoking, all of us engage in persuasion a large portion of the time. It isn’t a stretch to say that persuading others, or at least trying to, is part of the fabric of …

One Small Step For Legal Writing, One Giant Leap For Legal Education: Making The Case For More Writing Opportunities In The "Practice-Ready" Law School Curriculum, Sherri Lee Keene

Mercer Law Review

While the practice of law is often equated with writing, many law courses involve little or no writing during the semester, and often only require writing in student assessment. While accredited law schools are required to offer both first-year legal writing instruction and a rigorous writing experience during the second or third year,2 few law schools infuse legal writing throughout a student's three years of law school matriculation. While significant attention is given to the breadth of law taught in law school, more attention must be given to the depth of this knowledge and the application of this knowledge to …

Fresh Ears, Fresh Eyes: Final Editing Through Reading Aloud, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Mercer Law Review

I have always found the final editing process to be the most difficult. Each year in my clinic, The Habeas Project, my students and I may file as many as seven or eight court briefs. Belying the name "brief," these documents are not short. And after working on a project for three or six or even nine months, it is common for teachers and students alike to lose momentum and interest in a project along with the ability to find the typo in the haystack.

My clinic students are tired (and sometimes both sick AND tired) from working long weeks …

Legal Writing, The Remix: Plagiarism And Hip Hop Ethics, Kim D. Chanbonpin

Mercer Law Review

I begin this Article with a necessary caveat. Although I place hip hop music and culture at the center of my discussion about plagiarism and legal writing pedagogy, and my aim here is to uncover ways in which hip hop can be used as a teaching tool, I cannot claim to be a hip hop head. A hip hop "head" is a devotee of the music, an acolyte of its discourse, and, oftentimes, an evangelist spreading the messages contained therein. One head, the MC (or emcee) KRS-One, uses religious discourse to describe hip hop culture, naming his community organization, The …

What Is A Judicial Author?, Peter Friedman

Mercer Law Review

Martha Woodmansee has pointed out that

the law has yet to be affected by the "critique of authorship" initiated by Foucault and carried forward in the rich variety of post-structuralist research that has characterized literary studies during the last two decades. Indeed, . . . it would seem that as creative production becomes more corporate, collective, and collaborative, the law invokes the Romantic author all the more insistently.

Woodmansee wrote about the conceptions of authorship that legal institutions bring to bear in deciding copyright-related disputes.2 Nevertheless, the law's ignorance of the "critique of authorship" includes a willful ignorance of the …

Legal Writing: The View From Within, J. Christopher Rideout, Jill J. Ramsfield

Mercer Law Review

"[Wiriting is an act of identity . . . ."

We have seen that law professors systematically focus their students' attention on layers of textual and legal authority when deciphering the conflict stories at the heart of legal cases. But what happens to the people in these stories? What aspects of their identities and lives remain important when refracted through this legal lens? We can ask as well: What aspects of the law students' and professors' lives and experiences are considered to be salient during the conversation?

Why is writing hard to do? For lots of reasons, most people would …

Reflections, Remembrances, And Mimesis: One Person's View Of The Significance Of The 25th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Legal Writing Institute, David T. Ritchie

Mercer Law Review

I. INTRODUCTION

In a planning meeting for the 2009 Mercer Law Review Symposium celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI), a colleague of mine asked what I thought the significance of that event was to legal education. Not having a pithy and erudite answer ready at hand, I simply said "considerable." This answer seemed to me self-evident; the LWI had, after all, changed the way legal writing is taught in American law schools. It had also worked hard-along with the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD)-to increase the pay and status of legal writing …

Introduction To The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years Of Teaching & Scholarship, Kristin B. Gerdy

Mercer Law Review

The Legal Writing Institute (LWI), which was founded in 2004, is a professional organization dedicated to improving legal writing through teaching, discussion, and scholarship about legal writing, analysis, and research, both in law practice and in the academy. LWI boasts a membership of more than 2500, including members from more than thirty-eight countries, and it is the second largest organization of law professors in the United States. LWI also sponsors Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal established in 1988 as a forum for exchange of scholarly ideas and opinions about legal writing.

As …

Plenary I: The Historical Perspective Featuring Laurel Currie Oates, Jill J. Ramsfield & Mary Beth Beazley With Mary Garvey Algero As Moderator, And Plenary Ii: Teaching Marilyn R. Walter, M.H. Sam Jacobson & Carol Mccrehan Parker With Robin Boyle As Moderator

Mercer Law Review

The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & ScholarshipA Symposium of the Mercer Law Review
November 6, 2009Morning Session

Jill J. Ramsfield, Introduction: J. Christopher Rideout, Luncheon Speaker; And Kristin B. Gerdy & Pamela Lysaght, Presentation Of Mary S. Lawrence Award

Mercer Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Writing Life, Linda H. Edwards

Mercer Law Review

This Essay is written on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI), celebrated at the Mercer University Walter F. George School of Law, the LWI's current home. In a sense the Essay is retrospective, for it is written to honor the scholars whose work has moved us toward a vision of legal writing scholarship and all it can offer. Many of those experienced and inspiring scholars have kindly offered their advice for inclusion in this Essay. That advice is probably the most important content included here, and it is placed, appropriately, at the end of …

Legal Writing Scholarship, Making Strange, And The Aesthetics Of Legal Rhetoric, Jack L. Sammons

Mercer Law Review

Some of the central issues addressed at the 2009 Mercer Law Review Symposium "Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Founding of the Legal Writing Institute" involved questions about the scholarship potential of the discipline of legal writing. Those on the fringe of the academy, as legal writing professors are now and as clinicians were in the 1960s, often offer the clearest perspective on it, and in the case of the legal academy, on the practice itself. What scholarship, I wondered as I listened to the speakers, would best take advantage of this privileged perspective and of legal writing's necessary focus …

The Curse Of Tradition In The Law School Classroom: What Casebook Professors Can Learn From Those Professors Who Teach Legal Writing, M.H. Sam Jacobson

Mercer Law Review

The typical law school pedagogy suffers from a ham butt problem. As the story goes, a woman was preparing a ham dinner when she carefully cut off the ham butt before putting the ham in the oven to bake. A friend asked her why she did that. She said she did it because her mother did it. Why did her mother do it? She had no idea. So she asked her mother, why do you cut off the ham butt before putting it in the oven? Her mother said she did it because her mother did it. What was the …

Plenary Iii: Scholarship Featuring Linda Berger, Linda H. Edwards & Terrill Pollman With Kirsten Davis As Moderator; And Plenary Iv: Program Design Featuring Suzanne R. Rowe, Susan Hanley Duncan, & Eric B. Easton With Brooke Bowman As Moderator

Mercer Law Review

The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & Scholarship

A Symposium of the Mercer Law Review November 6, 2009

Afternoon Session

Stem Cell Research And Cloning For Human Reproduction: An Analysis Of The Laws, The Direction In Which They May Be Heading In Light Of Recent Developments, And Potential Constitutional Issues, Catherine D. Payne

Mercer Law Review

I. INTRODUCTION

The world is continuously changing before our eyes. New scientific and technological developments are constantly being made. Not surprisingly, these changes usually occur well before the law is ready to respond and accommodate them. One of the most recent developments that will soon be pushing the limits of the law is in the world of science. Researchers around the world have been independently working to see if they can unlock the secrets to the development of reproductive cells. Ultimately, the research teams are hoping to learn what causes stem cells to differentiate into sperm and egg cells. One …

Legal Writing: Did Harvard Get It Right?, Laurel Currie Oates

Mercer Law Review

For most law students, there is a moment when, in frustration or exhaustion, they throw up their hands and scream, "There must be a better way." While many of the cases in the casebooks are interesting, learning the law one case at a time seems, at best, inefficient, and at worst, just plain stupid. Wouldn't it be much easier, and better, if law schools used the same pedagogy that is used in many other disciplines: reading assignments, lectures, and exams that test whether students have learned the information set out in those textbooks and lectures?

When students question law school …

The Centrality Of Metaphor In Legal Analysis And Communication: An Introduction, David T. Ritchie

Mercer Law Review

Law, as a domain of human enterprise, is fundamentally discursive in nature. As such, understanding the elements of legal discourse, both analytical and communicative, is vital to understanding the nature of the enterprise. Metaphorical reasoning, and the communication of that reasoning, is one such element. Perhaps metaphor is one among many elements of legal discourse. In this view, metaphor theory would take its place alongside logic, narrative theory, rhetoric, and so on.

Levels Of Metaphor In Persuasive Legal Writing, Michael R. Smith

Mercer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Retelling The Darkest Story: Mystery, Suspense, And Detectives In A Brief Written On Behalf Of A Condemned Inmate, Philip N. Meyer

Mercer Law Review

I've never used the whodunit technique, since it is concerned altogether with mystification, which diffuses and unfocuses suspense. It is possible to build up almost unbearable tension in a play or film in which the audience knows who the murderer is all the time, and from the very start they want to scream out to all the other characters in the plot, "Watch out for So-and-So! He's a killer!" There you have the real tenseness and an irresistible desire to know what happens, instead of a group of characters deployed in a human chess problem. For that reason I believe …

Analyze This: Using Taxonomies To "Scaffold" Students' Legal Thinking And Writing Skills, Christine M. Venter

Mercer Law Review

Legal Writing

Many legal writing teachers speak glibly about training their students to think like lawyers, but have not necessarily tailored their pedagogy to meet that goal. If teachers are not clear and explicit in how they go about teaching students analytical skills, they cannot necessarily expect students to become experts in analysis. While it is true that over the course of their law school careers, most students will develop legal analytical skills through exposure to the law and by means of the Socratic method; teachers can do better. Lawyers pride themselves on precision. This Article argues that legal writing …

Legal Writing: Why Is A Legal Memorandum Like An Onion?-A Student's Guide To Reviewing And Editing, Terry Jean Seligmann

Mercer Law Review

If you are a student working on a legal memorandum, you may think the answer to the question posed by the title of this Article is that they can both make you cry. This Article may help you avoid tears by giving you a way to review your work. The legal memorandum is like an onion because it is a whole made up of many layers. These layers cover each other in levels that can be cross-sectioned and examined in place without losing the sense of the whole. The guidelines offered for that examination follow the priorities of your legal …

The Process And The Product: A Bibliography Of Scholarship About Legal Scholarship, Mary Beth Beazley, Linda H. Edwards

Mercer Law Review

This bibliography of scholarship about legal scholarship was originally prepared for the 1997 Conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. The Conference explored the rapidly developing area of scholarship by legal writing professors and the ways in which this important scholarship can be encouraged. Characteristically, when writing teachers turn their attention to a particular kind of writing the genre employs-that is, the process and the product. This bibliography is one result of that study. We hope that it will prove helpful to anyone interested in legal scholarship, especially to law faculty in the early stages of their scholarly careers. …

Legal Writing: Its Nature, Limits, And Dangers, Douglas Litowitz

Mercer Law Review

Lawyers have a unique and highly technical manner of writing, one that differs significantly from standard English. Legal education involves an indoctrination into this new discourse, a process that ends when one awakens to find oneself writing in a manner that once seemed impossibly obscure. Of course, the mastery of legal language reflects a paradigm shift in thought, sometimes called "learning to think like a lawyer" or "seeing things from a legal perspective." The conceptual scheme and language of the law are so different from the ordinary way of thinking that Lord Coke was perhaps correct when he characterized the …