Law Commons^™

Irlafarc! Surveying The Language Of Legal Writing, Terrill Pollman, Judith M. Stinson

Maine Law Review

Language, like law, is a living thing. It grows and changes. It both reflects and shapes the communities that use it. The language of the community of legal writing professors demonstrates this process. Legal writing professors, who stand at the heart of an emerging discipline in the legal academy, are creating new terms, or neologisms, as they struggle to articulate principles of legal analysis, organizational paradigms conventional to legal writing, and other legal writing concepts. This new vocabulary can be both beneficial and detrimental. It can be beneficial because it expands the substance of an emerging discipline. It also can …

Cleaning Up Quotations, Jack Metzler

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

For Coleen Miller Barger: A Note Of Thanks And Best Wishes, J. Thomas Sullivan

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Disciplinary Legal Empiricism, Lynn M. Lopucki

Maryland Law Review

This Article reports on an empirical study of one hundred and twenty empirical legal studies published in leading, non-peer-reviewed law reviews and in the peer-reviewed Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. The study is the first to compare studies by disciplinary empiricists—defined as Ph.D. holders—with those by non-disciplinary empiricists—defined as J.D. holders who are not also Ph.D. holders.

The study identifies three differences between disciplinary and non-disciplinary legal empiricism that are relevant to law school faculty hiring decisions. First, because disciplinary empiricists are more likely to collaborate with other disciplinary empiricists, hiring disciplinary empiricists will increase the quantity of legal …

What's Your Story? Every Famous Mark Has One: Persuasion In Trademark Opposition Briefs, Candace Hays

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

A key contention of legal writing scholarship is that the legal resolution is rooted in storytelling. The law consists of an endless telling and retelling of stories. Clients tell stories to their lawyers, who must figure out how to frame their client’s narrative into a legal context. Lawyers retell their clients’ stories to judges using pleadings, motions, and legal briefs. Judges and administrators retell these stories in the form of an opinion or verdict.

Storytelling in the legal context is an important element of persuasion. For the purpose of this comment, legal storytelling is defined as the use of fiction-writing …

New Wine In Old Wineskins: Metaphor And Legal Research, Amy E. Sloan, Colin Starger

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

This Essay argues that conceptualizing emerging legal technologies using inherited research metaphors is like pouring new wine in old wineskins—it simply doesn’t work. This Essay proposes to replace outdated research metaphors with updated metaphors that can provide the fresh wineskin to conceptualize current research challenges.