“What We’Ve Got Here Is Failure To Communicate”: The Plain Writing Act Of 2010, 2013 University of Miami School of Law
“What We’Ve Got Here Is Failure To Communicate”: The Plain Writing Act Of 2010, Rachel Stabler
Articles
No abstract provided.
The Promise Of Parentheticals: An Empirical Study Of The Use Of Parentheticals In Federal Appellate Briefs, 2013 University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law
The Promise Of Parentheticals: An Empirical Study Of The Use Of Parentheticals In Federal Appellate Briefs, Michael D. Murray
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
This article on current trends in briefing reports an empirical study of the use of parentheticals in federal appellate court briefs submitted between February 1, 2011, and July 31, 2011. The study was designed to answer this question: How are parentheticals currently used for rhetorical purposes in appellate briefs to explain a synthesis of authorities? My hypothesis entering the study was that parentheticals currently are used beyond a simple informational function in citation forms for four rhetorical purposes: (1) to quote and highlight portions of authorities ("quotation" function), (2) to explain and illustrate the principles induced from a synthesis of …
Teaching Legal History Through Legal Skills, 2013 University of Michigan Law School
Teaching Legal History Through Legal Skills, Howard Bromberg
Articles
I revolve my legal history courses around one methodology: teaching legal history by means of legal skills. I draw on my experience teaching legal practice and clinical s.kills courses to assign briefs and oral arguments as a means for law students to immerse themselves in historical topics. Without detracting from other approaches, I frame this innovation as teaching legal history not to budding historians but to budding lawyers.
Transactional Drafting: Using Law Firm Marketing Materials As A Research Resource For Teaching Drafting, 2013 University of Michigan Law School
Transactional Drafting: Using Law Firm Marketing Materials As A Research Resource For Teaching Drafting, Edward R. Becker
Articles
Since I started teaching drafting, I would like to think that I have continued to learn some lessons about teaching both the substance and the skills of transactional drafting. One of those lessons that I am going to be talking about today is one that I stumbled across by happy accident rather than one that I consciously sought. Specifically, I want to talk about and highlight the ways that law students can use law firm marketing materials to increase their understanding of both drafting and lawyering skills in law school and, hopefully, in practice.
Hydraulic Fracturing: Sources Of Law And Information, 2013 University of Michigan Law School
Hydraulic Fracturing: Sources Of Law And Information, Barbara H. Garavaglia
Articles
Hydraulic fracturing—also known as fracking—has become increasingly controversial in the United States over the past several years, especially in states such as Michigan with large shale gas deposits that were previously unextractable. In 2012, a Michigan fracking ban initiative failed to make it onto the November statewide ballot, but citizens groups are presently collecting signatures in an attempt to get the initiative onto the November 2014 ballot as an “initiated state statute.” And, more recently, state auctions of drilling permits have been the scenes of citizen protests driven by concerns about the potential environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing.
Grades Matter; Legal Writing Grades Matter Most, 2013 Georgetown University Law Center / George Washington University Law Center
Grades Matter; Legal Writing Grades Matter Most, Jessica L. Clark
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this study of 380 students in a law school’s 2011 graduating class, the data demonstrates a strong correlation between high performance in legal writing courses and high performance in non-legal writing courses. There is also a strong correlation at the opposite end: low performers in legal writing courses are low performers in non-legal writing courses. This article provides the hard data to support the significance of writing skills by demonstrating the correlation between performance in legal writing courses and performance in other law school courses by comparing grades and Grade Point Averages (GPAs). Of course grades and GPA data …
A Normalized Scoring Model For Law School Competitions, 2013 Vanderbilt University Law School
A Normalized Scoring Model For Law School Competitions, Edward K. Cheng, Scott J. Farmer
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Although the focus in this Article is moot court scoring, one can envision many other instances of law school assessment in which such a normalization problem arises. Law review competitions also involve different sets of graders, whose subjective determinations must be reasonably commensurate to make fair comparisons. Even more intriguing, although presenting a more complicated problem, law school grades suffer the same normalization concern. Courses feature material with different degrees of difficulty, attract different pools of students, and are taught by different instructors. Yet, class rank and graduation honors are ultimately calculated under the assumption that all grades are commensurate. …
A Look Inside The Butler’S Cupboard: Fiction Writers’ Insights On How The External World Reveals Internal State Of Mind In Appellate Briefs, 2013 Mercer University School of Law
A Look Inside The Butler’S Cupboard: Fiction Writers’ Insights On How The External World Reveals Internal State Of Mind In Appellate Briefs, Cathren Page
Articles
By studying the scene through the eyes of the client and the witnesses, the attorney can not only evoke this psychological subtext, but can also weave relevant and probative details into the statement of facts and the argument and elicit such detail at trial. For instance, in a case involving a car accident, the weather, the temperature, the time of day, the traffic on the road, and the color of the cars, signs, and traffic lights can be relevant as to the degree that a driver was negligent. Similarly, in a case involving child neglect, the smell of a home, …
Like A Glass Slipper On A Stepsister: How The One Ring Rules Them All At Trial, 2013 Mercer University School of Law
Like A Glass Slipper On A Stepsister: How The One Ring Rules Them All At Trial, Cathren Page
Articles
Trial attorneys can learn techniques that fiction writers have been using successfully for centuries and endow a single object to “rule them all.” In fact, there is a growing field of legal scholarship, known as Applied Legal Storytelling, which involves applying story telling concepts to legal concepts, and some evidence suggests that juries are responsive to narrative framework. Thus trial attorneys can use the literary concept of endowed objects to identify a key piece of physical evidence that weaves a thread of narrative continuity through the case and resonates in the mind of the judge or juror. ...
Endowed objects …
Oh, The Treatise!, 2013 Duke Law School
Oh, The Treatise!, Richard A. Danner
Faculty Scholarship
This foreword to the Michigan Law Review’s 2013 Survey of Books Related to the Law considers the history of the American legal treatise in light of the well-known criticisms of legal scholarship published by Judge Harry Edwards in 1992. As part of his critique, Edwards characterized the legal treatise as “[t]he paradigm of ‘practical’ legal scholarship.” In his words, treatises “create an interpretive framework; categorize the mass of legal authorities in terms of this framework; interpret closely the various authoritative texts within each category; and thereby demonstrate for judges or practitioners what ‘the law’ requires.” Part I examines the origins …
Issues And Trends In Collection Development For East Asia Legal Materials, 2013 Duke Law School
Issues And Trends In Collection Development For East Asia Legal Materials, Jootaek Lee, Xiaomeng Zhang, Keiko Okuhara, Evelyn Ma
Faculty Scholarship
The authors delineate the general policy and guidelines for developing foreign and transnational law collections in U.S. law libraries, and they analyze factors that shape East Asian collections, such as law libraries’ preservation and digitization efforts and their related cost-efficiency, and the availability and quality of English translations. The authors then discuss the main sources for Korean, Japanese, and Chinese law.
A Practical Guide To Legal Writing & Legal Method, 2012 Widener Univesity Law School
A Practical Guide To Legal Writing & Legal Method, John Dernbach, Richard Singleton, Cathleen Wharton, Joan Ruhtenberg, Catherine Wasson
John C. Dernbach
No abstract provided.
Teaching Westlawnext: Next Steps For Teachers Of Legal Research, 2012 University of San Francisco
Teaching Westlawnext: Next Steps For Teachers Of Legal Research, Ronald Wheeler
Ronald E Wheeler
As a follow up to his earlier piece titled "Does WestlawNext Really Change Everything: The Implications of WestlawNext on Legal Research," Professor Wheeler here explores strategies for teaching students to effectively research using the WestlawNext legal research platform. He focuses on challenging law librarians and other teachers of legal research to embrace change, to innovate and to devise research exercises that highlight both the advantages and the alleged pitfalls of WestlawNext. In particular, Professor Wheeler discusses source selection, filters, addressing the volume of results, esoteric content, and Boolean searching.
Tips For Lawyers Writing In A Time Crunch, 2012 Widener University Commonwealth Law School
Tips For Lawyers Writing In A Time Crunch, Anna Hemingway, Jennifer Lear
Anna P. Hemingway
Online Legal Research, Secondary Sources, Researching Judicial Opinions, Legal Citation, 2012 University of Oklahoma
Online Legal Research, Secondary Sources, Researching Judicial Opinions, Legal Citation, Darin Fox
Darin K. Fox
No abstract provided.
Admiralty And Maritime Law, 2012 Washington and Lee University School of Law
Thinking Outside The Box: Publication Opportunities Beyond The Traditional Law Review, 2012 Arizona State University
Thinking Outside The Box: Publication Opportunities Beyond The Traditional Law Review, Susan Chesler, Anna Hemingway, Tamara Herrera
Anna P. Hemingway
Wyoming Legal Research, 2012 University of Wyoming College of Law
Wyoming Legal Research, Debora A. Person, Tawnya K. Plumb
Tawnya K. Plumb
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, 2012 University of Maryland - Baltimore
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 Keene
Sherri Keene
Legal writing is more than an isolated practical skill or a law school course; it is a valuable tool for broadening and deepening one’s knowledge and understanding of the law. If experienced legal professionals, both professors and practitioners alike, take a hard look back at their careers, many will no doubt remember how their work on significant legal writing projects advanced their own knowledge of the law and enhanced their professional competence. Legal writing practice helps the writer to gain expertise in a number of ways: first, the act of writing itself promotes learning; second, close work on legal writing …
Overcoming Writer's Block And Procrastination For Attorneys, Law Students, And Law Professors, 2012 University of Southern California Gould School of Law
Overcoming Writer's Block And Procrastination For Attorneys, Law Students, And Law Professors, Meehan Rasch
Meehan Rasch
Law is a particularly writing-heavy profession. However, lawyers, law students, and law professors often struggle with initiating, sustaining, and completing legal writing projects. Even the most competent legal professionals experience periods in which the written word just does not flow freely. This article provides a guide for legal writers who are seeking to understand and resolve writing blocks, procrastination, and other common writing productivity problems.