Law Commons^™

Commas And Colons And Semicolons - Oh My! 10 Rules To Remember, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Kraft provides ten helpful grammar rules for commas. colons, and semicolons.

Does The Readability Of Your Brief Affect Your Chance Of Winning An Appeal?--An Analysis Of Readability In Appellate Briefs And Its Correlation With Success On Appeal, Lance N. Long, William F. Christensen

Lance N. Long

The study described in this article suggests that the length of sentences and words, which is “readability” for our purposes, probably does not make much difference in appellate brief writing. First, we found that most briefs are written at about the same level of readability; there simply is not much difference in how lawyers write appellate briefs when it comes to the length of sentences and words. Furthermore, the readability of most appellate briefs is well within the reading ability of the highly educated audience of appellate judges and justices. Second, the relatively small differences in readability are not related …

Elegant Expressions: Reflections On The Nature Of Great Legal Writing, Mark K. Osbeck

Mark K. Osbeck

The scholarly literature on legal writing is replete with various tips on how legal writers can improve their writing. Yet no scholar has yet provided, or even attempted to provide, a comprehensive account as to what it is that characterizes the best legal writing. This article fills that void. It analyzes the nature of excellence in legal writing and argues that great legal writing has four essential qualities: it is clear, it is concise, it is engaging, and it is elegant. The scholarly literature has ignored this last quality, focusing only on clarity, conciseness, and engagement. Yet it is the …

Peer Editing: A Comprehensive Pedagogical Approach To Maximize Assessment Opportunities, Integrate Collaborative Learning, And Achieve Desired Outcomes, Cassandra Hill

Cassandra L. Hill

This Article examines an underused teaching strategy—collaborative peer editing—through the lens of student learning outcomes and assessment measures. The American Bar Association (“ABA”) recently proposed sweeping changes to law school accreditation standards that focus less on input measures, such as the school’s facility, faculty size and budget, and more on output measures, such as the school’s bar passage and employment rates. This shift will require law schools—and law professors—to articulate student learning goals and assess their achievement. To do so, law professors must find efficient techniques to assess students’ performance. Peer editing presents such an opportunity.

This Article shows how …

Something Judicious This Way Comes... The Use Of Foreshadowing As A Persuasive Device In Judicial Narrative, Michael J. Higdon

Scholarly Works

With the recent publication of Judge Richard Posner’s book “How Judges Think” and the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayer to the United States Supreme Court, there has been much discussion about the way in which judges decide cases. Although certainly an interesting (and important) discussion, what has so far gone largely ignored is the question of how judges, once they reach a decision, convince the legal audience that the decision is in fact correct. Thus, in my article, entitled Something Judicious This Way Comes . . ., I focus not on how judges think, but how they write. More specifically, …

A Synergistic Pedagogical Approach To First-Year Teaching, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The First “Colonial Frontier” Legal Writing Conference, held at Duquesne University School of Law, focused on Engendering Hope in the Legal Writing Classroom: Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Attitude. This conference built on the foundational work of Allison Martin and Kevin Rand in which these scholars call for educators to engender hope in law students to prepare them for practice. Martin and Rand conclude that hope is a predictor of students’ academic performance and psychological health during the first semester of law school and recommend that law professors “maintain and creat[e] hope in law students” by embracing five core principles. Martin and …

Acknowledging Our Roots: Setting The Stage For The Legal Writing Institute, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article discusses the history and development of legal writing courses and the Legal Writing Institute.

Toward A Pedagogy For Teaching Legal Writing In Law School Clinics, Tonya Kowalski

Tonya Kowalski

One of the major legal skills students use in almost every law school clinic is advanced legal writing. Clinicians spend many hours every week triaging student writing and coaching their students to produce practice-worthy documents. Yet advanced legal writing is not routinely addressed in clinic seminars and there is no clear methodology for teaching advanced legal writing through clinical supervision. This Article is the first to propose a comprehensive pedagogy for teaching and supervising legal writing in clinic.

Moreover, clinicians commonly experience the frustration that students seem to come to the clinic deficient in many legal writing skills. This Article …

When The Case Gives You Lemons ... Using Negative Authority In Persuasive Legal Writing, Michael J. Higdon

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

When The Truth And The Story Collide: What Legal Writers Can Learn From The Experience Of Non-Fiction Writers About The Limits Of Legal Storytelling, Jeanne M. Kaiser

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines what can be gained and what can be lost by using storytelling in legal writing. After reviewing some basic principles of legal storytelling, the Article reviews some lessons that can be learned from the experience of the New Journalists who adopted literary techniques in their non-fiction work. In the end, the Author concludes that while there is much value in using the tools of fiction in legal writing, it is only with a blend of narrative and analysis that we most successfully do our jobs as lawyers.

A Tribute To Mary Lawrence, Ruth C. Vance

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A “Sending Down” Sabbatical: The Benefits Of Lawyering In The Legal Services Trenches, Stephen A. Rosenbaum, Suzanne Rabé

Publications

This article proposes that clinical professors, and legal writing professors in particular, consider practicing law - in real-life, non-clinical settings - during some significant portion of their sabbaticals from teaching. This proposal would (1) improve the learning experience for students in clinics, writing classes, and skills classes, (2) offer a vital public service to the under-represented, and (3) improve the overall administration of justice. At little cost, this proposal would foster a richer engagement by clinicians and legal writing professors with the world of legal practice. This idea could also infuse increased life and meaning into our law school classes. …

The Renaissance Road: Redesigning The Legal Writing Instructional Model, Johanna K.P. Dennis

Publications

The status quo in the required legal writing curriculum of legal education is a two-semester program in the first year of law school. However, this program requires that students simultaneously rethink and develop their legal writing skills while being taught an entirely new language - the language of the law. This program expects mastery from all students without accounting for their necessary rebirths or providing multiple opportunities for depth on various assignments. By contrast, institutions can rethink how they educate future lawyers and transition to a three-semester program, which allows more opportunity for horizontal growth and vertical advancement beyond the …

Statutory Interpretation In The Age Of Grammatical Permissiveness: An Object Lesson For Teaching Why Grammar Matters, Susan J. Hankin

Faculty Scholarship

This article uses an unpublished case interpreting New York’s animal cruelty law as an object lesson to teach why grammar matters. In People v. Walsh, 2008 WL 724724 (N.Y. Crim. Ct. Jan. 3, 2008), the court’s interpretation of the statute turned, in part, on the serial comma rule (sometimes called the “Oxford comma” rule). The court followed a mandatory approach to interpret the statute’s meaning, even though most contemporary grammar and style books make such use of a comma optional. One of the many benefits of using a case example to teach why grammar matters is that it focuses students …

Before They Even Start: Hope And Incoming 1ls, Barbara Brunner

Journal Articles

Newly-accepted law school 1Ls often express interest in how they should spend the summer before starting their fall courses in order to be best prepared for success in their first semester. This desire to have a "leg up" on law school success leads those of us teaching first-year courses to think more deeply about what constitutes a "good preparation" for the unique experiences that new law students will face, and what skills are really necessary to increase their possibilities of success, especially in the first semester.

Over the past few years, I have compiled a list of activities which I …

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

Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Making Workshops Work (For Everyone): Creating And Capturing A Student-Driven Writing Workshop Series, Iselin Magdalene Gambert, Benjamin James Grillot

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

It's not uncommon for new law students to arrive at law school anxious for support on their legal writing assignments and looking for strategies to improve their time management and exam preparation skills. At the same time, upper-level law students are often eager for opportunities to develop their public speaking, presentation development, and leadership skills. This article presents an overview of the 2009-10 Fall Writing Workshop Series, sponsored by the GW Law Writing Center, which successfully met both sets of goals. The article provides readers with concrete ideas for implementing a similar program at their law schools, and includes ideas …

Legal Writing And Other Lawyering Skills, Nancy Schultz, Louis Sirico

Nancy Schultz

No abstract provided.

Making Effective Use Of Practitioners' Briefs In The Law School Curriculum, Anna Hemingway

Anna P. Hemingway

A Practical Guide To Legal Writing And Legal Method, John Dernbach, Richard Singleton, Cathleen Wharton, Joan Ruhtenberg, Catherine Wasson

John C. Dernbach

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Past, Presence, And Future Of Legal Writing Scholarship: Rhetoric, Voice, And Community, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

This Article welcomes a new generation of legal writing scholars. In the first generation, legal writing professors debated whether they should be engaged in legal scholarship at all. In the second generation, assuming that they should be engaged in scholarship, legal writing professors discerned and defined different genres of and topics for the scholarship in which some or all of us were or should be engaged. In this Article, we map the contours of a third generation of legal writing scholarship—one that integrates the elements of our professional lives and engages more effectively with our professional communities. The core of …