Law Commons^™

40 More Writing Hacks For Appellate Attorneys, Brian C. Potts

Faculty Articles

Script for Trailer: “40 More Writing Hacks for Appellate Attorneys”

Fade in on aerial view of Washington, D.C.

Zoom in on Supreme Court Building. Chopper sounds. Enter helicopter fleet flying by.

Cut to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., sitting at his desk, reading. He rubs his forehead. Tired. Anxious. Distraught.

Chief: “What a mess! This brief could have been 10 pages shorter!”

Phone rings. Chief answers on speaker.

Law clerk’s voice through phone: “Chief, turn to Appellee’s brief. You’ve got to see this!”

Chief picks up different brief. Flips it open. Zoom in on face. Eyes widen. Jaw drops. …

A Prequel To Law And Revolution: A Long Lost Manuscript Of Harold J. Berman Comes To Light, John Witte Jr., Christopher J. Manzer

Faculty Articles

The late Harold Berman was a pioneering scholar of Soviet law, legal history, jurisprudence, and law and religion; he is best known today for his monumental Law and Revolution series on the Western legal tradition. Berman wrote a short book, Law and Language, in the early 1960s, but it was not published until 2013. In this early text, he adumbrated many of the main themes of his later work, including Law and Revolution. He also anticipated a good deal of the interdisciplinary and comparative methodology that we take for granted today, even though it was rare in the …

Engaging First-Year Students Through Pro Bono Collaborations In Legal Writing, Mary Bowman

Faculty Articles

This article recommends developing assignments for first-year legal writing courses through collaborations with legal services organizations. The article stems from and describes such ongoing projects at Seattle University School of Law, where several hundred first-year law students have worked on such projects so far. We have partnered with lawyers at organizations like the National Employment Law Project, the ACLU of Washington, and Northwest Justice Project to come up with live issues that they would like to have researched, and they received the best student work product from each class. The partner organizations have used the students’ work in several ways, …

Individuals And Community, Discipline Building And Disciplinary Values: The First Twenty-Five Years Of The Legal Writing Institute, Chris Rideout

Faculty Articles

In this article Professor Rideout is the speaker at the Luncheon Speech during the Symposium “The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & Scholarship”. Professor Rideout examines what the faculty and community in legal writing has been doing in the last twenty-five years that renders legal writing a discipline. Professor Rideout explains that in their work in legal writing, along with creating a community, faculty are also creating a discipline—one that has its own practices and that has its own embedded epistemologies, ideologies, and values. The underlying values constitute the legal writing community as a discipline—of legal writing—one …

Discipline-Building And Disciplinary Values: Thoughts On Legal Writing At Year Twenty-Five Of The Legal Writing Institute, J. Christopher Rideout

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Tributes To Mary S. Lawrence, Chris Rideout

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

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

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Penumbral Thinking Revisited: Metaphor In Legal Argumentation, Chris Rideout

Faculty Articles

In the modern jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court, the controversy over the place of metaphor came directly into the spotlight in Griswold v. Connecticut. Justice Douglas, writing for the majority and relying in part on metaphoric reasoning for his argument, located a right to privacy in the penumbral area formed by emanations from specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights. The various opinions in Griswold represent a divide regarding the place of metaphoric reasoning in legal argument. Justice Douglas employs metaphoric reasoning, while several of his fellow justices either avoid it or reject it. Because the case has …

Voice, Self, And Persona In Legal Writing, Chris Rideout

Faculty Articles

From the author's view, sorting out the complexity of voice—and discussing voice in legal prose—requires a rethinking of who the writer is in legal discourse and, importantly, how that writer is represented in legal prose. It becomes a question not of self expression, but of self-representation and persona. This article will first look at discussions of voice in writing—beginning with what we might mean by voice, then with discussion of personal voice, and then of professional voice. The article then offers another model for looking at voice — a discoursal model — and use that model to reconstruct the idea …

Crossover, Richard Delgado

Faculty Articles

Should minority writers aim for a "crossover" audience of mainstream (white) readers or write mainly for a circle of readers like themselves, viz., minorities or people of color? Despite the attractions of achieving crossover status -- including fame, fortune, and book reviews -- the article argues that writers of color should usually visualize an audience of their peers, that is, readers of color. Writing for a broad audience of mostly white readers risks that the minority writer will adopt topics, language, and approaches that will appeal and ring true to this group. Consciously or unconsciously the writer may pull his …

Updated Lessons In Conducting Basics Legal Research By Pro Se Litigants Who Cannot Afford An Attorney, Mike Martinez Jr, Michael P. Forrest, Paul S. Miller

Faculty Articles

The first generation of this article was written and published by The Scholar in 2006.1 Because the trend to accessing legal materials is geared more and more toward the Internet, the tour of the book world that was the focus of the original article requires expansion to include those sources available on the World Wide Web.2 Thus, this article contains most of the content in the original article, and then is supplemented by discussions of content currently available from online legal resources.

In Memoriam: Joseph M. Williams, Chris Rideout

Faculty Articles

Professor Chris Rideout pays tribute to Joseph M. Williams, 1933-2008, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago and author of Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, among other highly influential works. Professor Rideout shows his appreciation for Williams' generous support and many contributions to the world of writing instruction, especially legal writing.

The Poetry Of Law, Sidney Delong

Faculty Articles

This article examines the literature of statutory drafting. This underappreciated genre is perhaps the last place one would expect to find a sensitive soul struggling to escape the prison house of language. Yet the economic realities facing today's graduate students mean that many former lit majors will find their way onto legislative drafting committees, whence they peek out at us from under the sub-sections of their lives. It is time that this genre was formally recognized. Of course, its artists struggle against the challenge of the form and their achievements must be measured in millimeters rather than miles. This article …

Unlocking The Secrets Of Highly Successful Legal Writing Students, Anne Enquist

Faculty Articles

Why are some law students successful in their legal writing classes and others are not? To identify the secrets to success, Professor Enquist did a case study of six second-year law students as they wrote a motion brief and an appellate brief for their 2L legal writing course. Based on their 1L legal writing course, two of these students were predicted to be highly successful, two were predicted to be moderately successfully, and two were predicted to be only marginally successful. Through daily records of all their activities related to writing the briefs, interviews with the study subjects, drafts of …

The Next Generation Of Legal Citations: A Survey Of Internet Citations In The Opinions Of The Washington Supreme Court And Washington Appellate Courts, 1999-2005, Tina Ching

Faculty Articles

As more legal research is conducted online, it is reasonable to conclude that there will be a corresponding increase in citations to the Internet by judges in their opinions. With the widespread public use of the Internet to access information along with the constant changes and impermanence of websites, citing to the Internet should be an issue of increasing concern to the legal community across the country. This paper surveys the types of Internet sources the Washington state Supreme Court and Appellate Court justices are citing. It discusses the interrelated issues of link rot and the impermanence of web pages, …

The Law Is Not The Case: Incorporating Empirical Methods Into The Culture Of Case Analysis, Kay L. Levine

Faculty Articles

While I consider case analysis in the context of cultural defense jurisprudence, this Essay should be regarded as a case study of a more endemic problem in legal scholarship. In tackling such an area, my goal is not to overthrow centuries of legal analysis, but rather to explore how we, as legal scholars, might use social science techniques to more systematically investigate, document, analyze, and predict the state of a particular comer of the legal universe.

The argument proceeds in two parts. Part II considers empirical approaches to the question raised by Lee: how might we ascertain the relationship between …

Too Broke To Hire An Attorney - How To Conduct Basic Legal Research In A Law Library, Mike Martinez Jr, Michael P. Forrest

Faculty Articles

This article targets as its audience pro se patrons - individuals who cannot afford counsel and need to conduct their own legal research. The poor and disenfranchised have historically had difficulty getting equal access to justice. The cause is often the fact that they cannot afford legal representation. This could lead to exclusion from the legal process. A solution might be self-representation, which presents its own difficulties, as the pro se litigant will likely need to access resources in a law library.

Leveling The Playing Field: Helping Students Succeed By Helping Them Learn To Read As Expert Lawyers, Laurel Oates

Faculty Articles

The article explores a way in which law schools can level the field of student admission in order to ensure the success of students as law students and as lawyers in the United States. A study which compares the reading skills of a professor and four students who had been admitted to law school under a special admissions program is presented. It provides the techniques for students to develop their reading skills. It emphasizes on the importance of teaching legal reading.

Chinese Law And Legal Research (Book Review), Chenglin Liu

Faculty Articles

Mr. Wei Luo has taken up the enormous challenge of establishing a subject-arrangement codification system and a uniform legal citation standard for China. Mr. Luo’s unique exposure to the Chinese legal system and law making process has made him the ideal scholar to address Chinese legal research. As a result of a five-year-long endeavor to direct these codification and legal citation projects, Mr. Luo has published his outstanding volume Chinese Law and Chinese Legal Research.

As the title of the book indicates, Mr. Luo’s work has gone far beyond the scope of an ordinary research guide or annotated bibliography. He …

Improving Legal Writing Courses: Perspectives From The Bar And Bench, Constance Krontz, Susan Mcclellan

Faculty Articles

To fine-tune legal writing courses to better prepare law students to enter legal practice, Professors Constance Krontz and Susan McClellan surveyed judges and practicing attorneys who supervise the work of first-year associates or judicial law clerks. They selected attorneys from a variety of practices in Washington State, including offices of public defenders and state prosecutors, the Attorney General's office, and private firms of various sizes. They sought information about the performance of all first-year clerks and associates, without reference to where they obtained their law degrees. Knowledge of the bench and bar's perception of the oral and written performance of …

The Way We Were And What We “B”, Kelly Kunsch

Faculty Articles

This article describes the changes over the past 20 years in the job of reference librarian. Using typical reference questions and quotes from leading law librarians in the early '80s, the author compares current practice and explains the differences in the time, place, and manner of legal reference. Although answering questions may be done today more quickly and efficiently than 20 years ago, the increase in demand and expectations make the job more challenging than ever.

I Know That I Taught Them How To Do That, Laurel Oates

Faculty Articles

Teachers have complained for years that students could not transfer their skills from one class to another, and employers have complained that the students could not apply the skills they learned in class to real world tasks. This article delves into the issues involved in students acquiring skills and the ability to transfer those to skills to similar tasks. The article describes the four steps involved in transfer identified by researchers: problem representation, search and retrieval, mapping, and application.

Substantive Editing Versus Technical Editing: How Law Review Editors Do Their Job, Anne Enquist

Faculty Articles

Law review editors often have a hard time adjusting to their new role of evaluating and critiquing the work of professors and established legal scholars, resulting in entire editorial boards missing fundamental problems in a particular article. The author provides a solution to this problem by recommending the adoption of two separate phases of editing - a substantive editing phase, which addresses what the article actually communicates, and a technical editing phase, which addresses the form the author uses to communicate. As examples for any law review to follow, the author provides two substantive edits of two different author submissions …

Beyond Communication: Writing As A Means Of Learning, Laurel Oates

Faculty Articles

In this article, Professor Oates examines the belief that writing facilitates learning from several perspectives. Part I describes the writing-to-learn movement, beginning with James N. Britton's and Janet Emig's assertions that writing is a unique method of learning and ending with John M. Ackerman's claim that writing is no better and, is sometimes worse, than other modes of learning. Building on the evidence described in Part I, Part II discusses writing to learn in light of four theories: behaviorism, Linda S. Flower and John Hayes's models of the composing process, Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia's models of knowledge telling and …

Sailing Through Designing Memo Assignments, Lorraine K. Bannai, Anne Enquist, Judith Maier, Susan Mcclellan

Faculty Articles

Sailing and designing memo assignments have a lot in common. At first, both can seem overwhelming - so much to learn, so much to organize sequentially, and so much to get right in a short period of time. Mistakes mean instability, lost time, and possibly capsizing. Avoiding the mistakes, a good skipper can break through to clean water and good air, and teaching writing can be exhilarating. The students and teacher both benefit from and enjoy working with an ideal memo assignment. The process is critical, but the destination is key. No memo assignment is effective if it results in …

A History Of Writing Advisors At Law Schools: Looking At Our Past, Looking At Our Future, Anne Enquist, Jessie Grearson

Faculty Articles

The authors, themselves writing advisors at The John Marshall Law School and Seattle University School of Law respectively, have recently surveyed both Directors of Legal Writing and Writing Advisors across the country to learn more about the phenomena of Writing Advisors in law schools. This article will report the results of that survey. First, however, the authors will give a brief history of the events surrounding the arrival of Writing Advisors at law schools, including the rise of the writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) movement, and then they will describe how these events set the stage for Writing Advisors at law schools. Second, …

Teach In Context: Responding To Diverse Student Voices Helps All Students Learn, Paula Lustbader

Faculty Articles

This article uses quotes from interviews with diverse students as a spring board to discuss contextualized learning theory and teaching strategies to enhance student learning. Students must relate new information to their own experience; develop ideas about the new information; and articulate their understanding of it. In other words, to fully understand something, students must be able to relate to it, own it, and translate it. To help students do this, the article discusses and provides examples of three concrete teaching strategies: experiential learning exercises, writing exercises, and collaborative exercises.

Education's Promise, Laurel Oates, Sam Wineberg

Faculty Articles

This is a story with at least two parts. In the first part, Sam Wineburg, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Washington, tells his story, the story of instruction in the United States, beginning with one revolution, the scientific revolution, and ending with another, the cognitive revolution. In the second part, Laurel Oates, the Director of Legal Writing at Seattle University School of Law, tells our story, the story of legal education and, in particular, legal writing, and how both have been affected by these revolutions.

Critiquing Law Students’ Writing: What The Students Say Is Effective, Anne Enquist

Faculty Articles

It seemed worthwhile to study the comments legal writing instructors put on students' papers and ask the readers of those comments - the students themselves - which comments were the most useful. This article describes such a study that was conducted by the author using students and faculty at the University of Puget Sound School of Law. The results should be useful to new legal writing faculty who are striving to learn how to critique their students' writing effectively, as well as to experienced legal writing faculty who are interested in whether the conventional wisdom about critiquing is borne out …

Legal Writing: A Revised View, Chris Rideout, Jill J. Ramsfield

Faculty Articles

This article begins with the premise that most law students will become professional writers: that is, they will make their living from writing, whether in practice or academia. As such, they should be confident and comfortable with legal discourse and composition in practical, social, and intellectual contexts. That confidence must be based on good training throughout their law school careers, and that training must look beyond legal writing problems to solutions. To suggest solutions to legal writing problems, this article examines traditional definitions of legal writing, definitions that may themselves be impeding progress toward more effective training. It then offers …