Law Commons^™

Polishing Makes Perfect . . . Or Maybe Not, Melissa N. Henke

Law Faculty Popular Media

This column offers some tips and strategies that can improve the proofreading process you use. To be clear, I use the term proofreading to refer to the final stage of editing. Of course proofreading can never take the place of earlier stages of rewriting or revising for organization, content, clarity, or conciseness. But this final stage of editing is crucial, because it is where you identify and fix any problems with spelling, grammar, and punctuation that leave your document looking less than polished.

The Future Of Law Libraries, Tina M. Brooks, Franklin L. Runge, Beau Steenken

Law Faculty Popular Media

Law libraries are filed with the rules that govern our society, thoughtful scholars, conscientious lawyers, some hard working students, and some procrastinating students. In the past, this required libraries to collect hardbound volumes and loose leafs. Today, the collection is beginning to give way to research platforms filed with those same, or similar, materials and then some; much of the primary legal documentation is even freely available on the web.

While the physical footprint of the library may be smaller as a result of this transition, the amount of legal information that researchers have access to has grown exponentially. We …

Do Real Lawyers Use Creac?, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Historical Headnotes: A Case Study Of A Research Problem, Amelia Landenberger

Law Faculty Popular Media

This article began as a case study of a legal research problem: how to properly attribute a note that was printed in the margins of a historical case reporter. The article guides the reader through various methods of investigating ambiguities in historical legal texts, including comparing the electronic and print versions of the text, contacting editors at Westlaw and Lexis, conducting research in contemporary newspapers, and researching the author of the document. The article also addresses the importance of early court reporters and court reporting generally. It concludes with a reminder to carefully consider sources of information and the reporters …

Visual Rhetoric: Topics Of Invention And Arrangement And Tropes Of Style, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article evaluates visual legal rhetoric in order to demonstrate the potential of visual-graphical devices and narrative elements for use in legal discourse. The subject of my demonstration of graphical rhetorical devices is the famous work of modern rhetoric, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." I will perform a rhetorical analysis of the verbal topics of invention and tropes of style in the text of the letter, and simultaneously demonstrate the use of images and visual elements in an "illustrated" form of the letter.

Part II of this Article provides an introduction and background information regarding …

The Ethics Of Visual Legal Rhetoric, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article discusses both visual rhetoric and visual narrativity. Visual rhetoric is the use of graphics, photographs, and other depictions for communication, for construction of knowledge and understanding, and ultimately for persuasion in the truth and rightness of the communication. Narrativity, which is sometimes described as narrative reasoning or storytelling," is the modern movement to focus our legal writing on the tools that best communicate our clients' stories-their situation, conditions, and circumstances-along with the "story" of the development, growth, and meaning of the law itself that provides the context for the clients' legal situation. Communicating the story of the development …

Keeping Up With New Legal Titles, Beau Steenken

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this book review, Beau Steenken discusses Legal Research Methods by Michael D. Murray & Christy H. DeSanctis.