Law Commons^™

Access To Law Or Access To Lawyers? Master's Programs In The Public Educational Mission Of Law Schools, Mark Burge

Faculty Scholarship

The general decline in juris doctor (“J.D.”) law school applicants and enrollment over the last decade has coincided with the rise of a new breed of law degree. Whether known as a master of jurisprudence, juris master, master of legal studies, or other names, these graduate degrees all have a target audience in common: adult professionals who neither are nor seek to become practicing attorneys. Inside legal academia and among the practicing bar, these degrees have been accompanied by expressed concerns that they detract from the traditional core public mission of law schools—educating lawyers. This Article argues that non-lawyer master’s …

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 …

References To Movies In Judicial Opinions And Written Advocacy, Part 1, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

In opinions in cases with no claims or defenses concerning movies or the movie industry, trial and appellate judges often help explain substantive or procedural points, or help embellish the discussion, with references to themes, scenes, or characters from well-known films that have held Americans’ attention. Sometimes the reference appears in an opinion of the court, and sometimes it appears in a concurring or dissenting opinion.

America's Founding Editors: Writing The Declaration Of Independence, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

On Congress’ behalf, one of its members, 33-year-old Virginia lawyer Thomas Jefferson, drafted the Declaration of Independence. For the next half century, Jefferson’s fierce pride of authorship, unrestrained by humility, kept him from crediting Congress for skilled editing that helped make him a national icon by sharpening his powerful, but less than polished, draft. The irony of lawyer Jefferson’s enduring bitterness and ingratitude can stimulate today’s lawyers to sharpen their own drafts by respecting cooperative editors as valuable allies, not as troublesome adversaries.

Help Me, Help You: What You Should Know Before You Ask For Help, Meredith A.G. Stange

College of Law Faculty Publications

I got an email the other day from a student who was having some difficulty writing his arguments. The student wrote that he kept rewriting his arguments in response to my comments but that he still had not been able to get them written satisfactorily. I could tell the student was frustrated and I could also tell that, for the moment, at least, I was the target of that frustration. Essentially, the student was telling me that he had changed things in accordance with my comments, but I still was not happy. Having been teaching for fifteen years, the frustration …

Simple Legal Writing Can Improve Business Outcomes In Latin America, Leon C. Skornicki

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

References To Television Shows In Judicial Opinions And Written Advocacy (Part Ii), Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

In the Journal’s January-February issue, Part I of this article began by surveying television’s profound influence on American culture since the early 1950s, a sturdy foundation for federal and state judges who cite or discuss well known television shows in their opinions. Part I presented television drama shows.

This Part II picks up where Part I left of. The discussion below presents television situation comedies (“sitcoms”) and reality TV shows that appear in judicial opinions. The discussion concludes by explaining why advocates should feel comfortable following the judges’ lead by carefully using television references to help make written substantive or …

The Deconstructed Issue-Spotting Exam, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article proposes a teaching technique for use in large, Socratic-style law school classes to embed exam preparation, formative assessment, and lawyering simulations in the course without overburdening the professor or students. This technique is sustainable, yet highly efficacious for students.

Law schools nationwide are implementing new reforms pushing law schools toward stronger assessment techniques and client-based simulations better preparing students for the practice of law. Many law schools have implemented these reforms around the margins or outside of the traditional doctrinal course. Law schools have generally added new classes with experiential learning components or with simulations integrated into the …

The Unparalleled Benefits Of Teaching Parallelism, Rachel H. Smith

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

As a student, I never learned how to use parallel structure, or “parallelism,” as a writing technique. I didn’t even know the official term until I started teaching legal writing. But even if I couldn’t name it, I always knew I liked it. As a high-school history student, I felt its force in speeches like Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream. Parallelism always felt to me like the place where poetry meets prose—where even the most mundane writing can start to sing.

The Architecture Of Drama: How Lawyers Can Use Screenwriting Techniques To Tell More Compelling Stories, Teresa M. Bruce

Publications

Hollywood writers have a secret. They know how to tell a compelling story—so compelling that the top-grossing motion pictures rake in millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars. How do they do it? They use a simple formula involving three acts that propel the story forward, three "plot points" that focus on the protagonist, and two "pinch points" that focus on the adversary. The attached Article argues that lawyers should build their stories in the same way Hollywood writers do. It deconstructs the storytelling formula used in movies and translates it into an IRAC-like acronym, SCOR. Attorneys who use SCOR will …

Live And Learn: Live Critiquing And Student Learning, Patricia G. Montana

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

After nearly fifteen years of teaching first-year and upper-level legal writing courses and commenting on thousands of student papers, I decided to experiment with a new way of giving feedback. In a break from the traditional written feedback I had become accustomed to in the form of margin comments and a combination of line edits and end notes, I opted to live a little and learn a new practice: live critiquing. Live critiquing is essentially the process of giving students feedback on their work “live” or in-person, rather than in writing. In the most liberal approach to live critiquing, …

Finding Balance: Using Employment Law Problems To Achieve Multiple Learning Goals In Persuasive Legal Writing, Rosa Castello

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Legal Writing professors, like myself, face the same challenge each new semester: how can I effectively and efficiently help students learn one of the most important skills for a practicing lawyer? And one large hurdle in this quest to make our students good legal writers is creating a trial motion or appellate brief problem that helps them develop the particular skills required for persuasive legal writing. The act of creating the problem is sometimes like tightrope walking̶ finding just the right balance of facts and law to challenge students and help develop and enhance vital research, analytical, organizational, writing, …

References To Television Shows In Judicial Opinions And Written Advocacy (Part I), Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

On The Values Of Words, Michael J. Cedrone

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Mary Norris' Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen and Kory Stamper's Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries use observations about language as a touchstone for a nuanced examination of deeper truths about language, culture, and law in a changing world. In so doing, they point to deeper truths about the use of language and its consequences. Law students, lawyers, and law professors will benefit from journeying with Norris and Stamper towards the goal of crafting prose that is clear, accurate, and inclusive. In particular, the legal community will benefit from the books' efforts to define …

Justice Kennedy's Prose – Style And Substance, Eric Segall, Eric Berger, Michael C. Dorf, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement in June 2018 sent shockwaves throughout America. After Justice Sandra Day O'Connor left the Court in 2005, Justice Kennedy became the Court's all-important swing vote in virtually every important area of constitutional law. His views on affirmative action, abortion, campaign finance reform, free speech, and the separation of church and state (among many other constitutional issues) were the ones that mattered the most among the Justices. Lawyers prepared arguments and filed briefs in the Supreme Court for the main purpose of persuading Justice Kennedy to rule for their clients. He was, quite simply, the …

A "Case" Study In Legal Writing Pedagogy: Connecting Doctrine And Skills To Authentic Client Voices, Becky Jacobs

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Legal writing faculty have too little time to teach too many skills. To choices of deciding which skills to teach, how to teach those skills, and how much time to allocate to each skill." This brief essay will discuss one case, Epps v. Gober, that two instructors have found to be a veritable Swiss Army knife (nod to Tracy McGaugh), offering a range of versatile functions in the legal writing classroom.