Law Commons^™

Exploring Anti-Racism In The First Year Legal Writing Classroom, Amanda K. Maus Stephen

Presentations

The Legal Writing Institute hosted a series of one-day workshops at various law schools, including at SU, where the theme of the workshops was "Teaching Values in the Legal Writing Classroom." This presentation explores assignments and activities that legal writing professors can use to introduce and reinforce ant-racism as a critical professional value.

Still Writing At The Master’S Table: Decolonizing Rhetoric In Legal Writing For A “Woke” Legal Academy, Teri A. Mcmurtry-Chubb

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

When the author wrote Writing At the Master’s Table: Reflections on Theft, Criminality, and Otherness in the Legal Writing Profession almost 10 years ago, her aim was to bring a Critical Race Theory/Feminism (CRTF) analysis to scholarship about the marginalization of White women law professors of legal writing. She focused on the convergence of race, gender, and status to highlight the distinct inequities women of color face in entering their ranks. The author's concern was that barriers to entry for women of color made it less likely that the existing legal writing professorate, predominantly White and female, would problematize the …

Ok, Google, Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Lawyering?, Amy Vorenberg, Julie A. Oseid, Melissa Love Koenig

Law Faculty Scholarship

Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) replace human lawyering? The answer is no. Despite worries that AI is getting so sophisticated that it could take over the profession, there is little cause for concern. Indeed, the surge of AI in the legal field has crystalized the real essence of effective lawyering. The lawyer’s craft goes beyond what AI can do because we listen with empathy to clients’ stories, strategize to find that story that might not be obvious, thoughtfully use our imagination and judgment to decide which story will appeal to an audience, and creatively tell those winning stories.

This article reviews …

How We Built A Scholarly Working Group Devoted To Classical Legal Rhetoric (And How You Can Do The Same Thing With Other Legal Writing Subjects), Brian Larson, Kirsten K. Davis, Lori D. Johnson, Ted Becker, Susan E. Provenzano

Brian Larson

Better Briefs, Lydia Fearing

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Abstract forthcoming

'Experiential Education Through The Vis Moot' And 'Building On The Bergsten Legacy: The Vis Moot As A Platform For Legal Education', Ronald A. Brand

Articles

Recent discussions of experiential education have at times considered the role of moot opportunities in legal education. Many, if not most, moot courts and related activities have been designed primarily as competitions. One moot, the Willem Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, is different in that it was designed, and has been consistently administered, as a tool for educating future lawyers. That education has included both skills training of the highest order and the development of a doctrinal understanding of important international legal instruments, especially those created and administered by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). This pair …

Amos Lee's "Street Corner Preacher" Through Michel Foucault's Critique Of Scientific Knowledge: A Critique Of Legal Knowledge, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

This article will demonstrate that although students of the law, legal scholars, and practitioners rely on a relatively narrow body of “legal scholarship,” there are in fact sundry diverse sources of legal thought that deserve to be evaluated along with currently accepted legal scholarship. It will present arguments in favor of appreciating music as a unique and important source of legal commentary through which we might understand how people relate to the law—what I have called “coming to the law.” It will demonstrate that music can be uniquely transgressive and presents a powerful alternative to what Michel Foucault called “scientific …

Who Wants To Be A Muggle? The Diminished Legitimacy Of Law As Magic, Mark E. Burge

Mark Edwin Burge

In the Harry Potter world, the magical population lives among the non-magical Muggle population, but we Muggles are largely unaware of them. This secrecy is by elaborate design and is necessitated by centuries-old hostility to wizards by the non-magical majority. The reasons behind this hostility, when combined with the similarities between Harry Potter-stylemagic and American law, make Rowling’s novels into a cautionary tale for the legal profession that it not treat law as a magic unknowable to non-lawyers. Comprehensibility — as a self-contained, normative value in the enactment interpretation, and practice of law — is given short-shrift by the legal …

Legal Storytelling: The Theory And The Practice - Reflective Writing Across The Curriculum, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

This article concentrates on the theory of narrative or storytelling and addresses the reasons it is vital to encourage in law schools in non-clinical or primarily doctrinal courses. Section I traces the advent of storytelling in legal theory and practice: while lawyers have long recognized that part of their job is to tell their clients' stories, the legal academy was, for many years, resistant to narrative methodologies. Section II examines the current applications of Writing Across the Curriculum in law schools. Most exploratory writing tasks in law school come in clinical courses, although a few adventurous professors are adding reflective …

Jethro Lieberman And The Litigious Society, Tom Goldstein

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Imagining The Law-Trained Reader: The Faulty Description Of The Audience In Legal Writing Textbooks., Jessica E. Price

ExpressO

In law schools today, first-year legal writing courses play a crucial role in helping students learn to communicate about the law. Many legal writing teachers approach legal writing education in a practical way, attempting to pass on their own experiences in law practice settings to students. Unfortunately, as other writers have observed, such reliance on personal knowledge about “what lawyers are like” may lead legal writing teachers to oversimplify a complicated matter – the needs and preferences of the audience for legal writing – and may even amount to indoctrination in stereotypes about law practice. This article offers a closer …

"In A Case, In A Book, They Will Not Take A Second Look!" Critical Reading In The Legal Writing Classroom, Debra Curtis, Judith Karp

Faculty Scholarship

This article is based on a presentation that was first assembled for the Southeastern Regional Legal Writing Conference in September 2003. The theme of that conference was "The Basics and Beyond: Building Solid Skills on Flawed Foundations." As legal writing professions with nine years of teaching experience between us, we immediately honed in on "reading" as a core lawyering skill--though it is the one that seemed most flawed in the first-year legal writing class. We determined that case analysis, statute analysis, synthesis, and application were not possible unless students critically read the material with which they were working. Many students …