Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Obergefell V. Hodges—And The Use Of Oral Argument And Storytelling To Reinforce Competencies In The Legal Writing Classroom, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Legal writing professors struggle with trying to balance learning skills with the bigger picture of learning that law is ultimately about having the power to change lives. Often, learning the skills becomes completely separated from the human aspect of the law. Although we all work toward unifying the two concepts, it is not always done by having discussions about the bigger issues, or even having the students look at more traditional sources such as briefs or even law review articles. Oyez and the oral tradition of storytelling presented by radio (or other similar resources) have the potential of more fully …

Justice Ginsburg, Civil Procedure Professor And Champion Of Judicial Federalism, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Architecture Of Drama: How Lawyers Can Use Screenwriting Techniques To Tell More Compelling Stories, Teresa M. Bruce

Publications

Hollywood writers have a secret. They know how to tell a compelling story—so compelling that the top-grossing motion pictures rake in millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars. How do they do it? They use a simple formula involving three acts that propel the story forward, three "plot points" that focus on the protagonist, and two "pinch points" that focus on the adversary. The attached Article argues that lawyers should build their stories in the same way Hollywood writers do. It deconstructs the storytelling formula used in movies and translates it into an IRAC-like acronym, SCOR. Attorneys who use SCOR will …

The Changing Discourse Of The Supreme Court, Stephen M. Johnson

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Academics, judges, and other commentators complain that, for the past few decades, the Justices on the Supreme Court have been increasingly writing opinions that are unreadable for most American citizens. Those critics complain that the opinions are too long and too complex, riddled with incomprehensible multi-part tests. They also attack the style of the opinions and assert that recent opinions are more likely to be written in a technocratic, rather than persuasive, style.

There seems to be little consensus among the critics regarding why the Justices are writing opinions that are increasingly unreadable. Some attribute it to the increasing …