Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

An Empirical Analysis Of Empirical Legal Scholarship Production, 1990-2009, Michael R. Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Inspired by the retirement of Professor Tom Ulen of the University of Illinois, the author considers the growth and development of empirical legal scholarship over two decades—a period of time that corresponds, not coincidentally, with Professor Ulen’s career. Starting in the 1990s when empirical scholarship had not yet “caught on,” the author first documents the increase in quantity of empirical scholarship over two decades. Next, the author applies a law and economics perspective to the recent surge in empirical scholarship, explaining that the trend has been fueled by an increase in the number of empirically trained scholars and also by …

Defining International Law Librarianship In An Age Of Multiplicity, Knowledge, And Open Access To Law, Richard A. Danner

Faculty Scholarship

Many law librarians are experts in international law and legal research. The concept of ‘international law librarianship’, however, encompasses something more than a field of study in which a group of experts practise their profession. In the broader sense, the idea suggests a common calling, similar interests, and goals shared by librarians with a range of specialties beyond international law, working in all types of law libraries. What commonalities create and sustain the concept of international law librarianship? This paper suggests that they can be found in: law librarians’ common need to respond to the ‘multiplicity’ of information sources facing …

Student-Edited Law Reviews And Their Role In U.S. Legal Education, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

>p>For well over a centur y student-edited law reviews have been a major vehicle for publication of scholarship on law in the United States. At those law reviews, students bear responsibility for nearly all aspects of the publication process, including the vitally important task of selecting what works will be published. Criticisms have been raised over various aspects of this system, but they have not stemmed the rise of student-edited law reviews. Today, such law reviews are firmly entrenched as a central feature of the U.S. legal system; and, facilitat­ ed by advances in technology, the number of student-edited …

The Lady, Or The Tiger? A Field Guide To Metaphor & Narrative, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

Metaphor and narrative reassure us that things hang together, providing a sense of coherence to the patterns and paths we employ for perception and expression. In this field guide, I hope to illustrate - with images and stories when possible - how better understanding of metaphor and narrative can guide those engaged in legal rhetoric and persuasion.

The article briefly summarizes cognitive theory relating to metaphor and narrative, provides snapshots of their use in the field, in real-life legal persuasion, and suggests ways to adapt metaphor and narrative to a specific example of legal persuasion. In the field guide section, …

Creac Scramble: An Active Self-Assessment Exercise, Meredith Aden

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

True North: Navigating For The Transfer Of Learning In Legal Education, Tonya Kowalski

Seattle University Law Review

As lifelong learners, we all know the feelings of discomfort and bewilderment that can come from being asked to apply existing skills in a completely new situation. As legal educators, we have also experienced the frustration that comes from watching our students struggle to identify and transfer skills from one learning environment to another. For example, a first-semester law student who learns to analogize case law to a fact pattern in a legal writing problem typically will not see the deeper applications for those skills in a law school essay exam several weeks later. Similarly, when law students learn how …

Plenary I: The Historical Perspective Featuring Laurel Currie Oates, Jill J. Ramsfield & Mary Beth Beazley With Mary Garvey Algero As Moderator, And Plenary Ii: Teaching Marilyn R. Walter, M.H. Sam Jacobson & Carol Mccrehan Parker With Robin Boyle As Moderator

Mercer Law Review

The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & ScholarshipA Symposium of the Mercer Law Review
November 6, 2009Morning Session

Jill J. Ramsfield, Introduction: J. Christopher Rideout, Luncheon Speaker; And Kristin B. Gerdy & Pamela Lysaght, Presentation Of Mary S. Lawrence Award

Mercer Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Writing Life, Linda H. Edwards

Mercer Law Review

This Essay is written on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI), celebrated at the Mercer University Walter F. George School of Law, the LWI's current home. In a sense the Essay is retrospective, for it is written to honor the scholars whose work has moved us toward a vision of legal writing scholarship and all it can offer. Many of those experienced and inspiring scholars have kindly offered their advice for inclusion in this Essay. That advice is probably the most important content included here, and it is placed, appropriately, at the end of …

Stem Cell Research And Cloning For Human Reproduction: An Analysis Of The Laws, The Direction In Which They May Be Heading In Light Of Recent Developments, And Potential Constitutional Issues, Catherine D. Payne

Mercer Law Review

I. INTRODUCTION

The world is continuously changing before our eyes. New scientific and technological developments are constantly being made. Not surprisingly, these changes usually occur well before the law is ready to respond and accommodate them. One of the most recent developments that will soon be pushing the limits of the law is in the world of science. Researchers around the world have been independently working to see if they can unlock the secrets to the development of reproductive cells. Ultimately, the research teams are hoping to learn what causes stem cells to differentiate into sperm and egg cells. One …

Plenary Iii: Scholarship Featuring Linda Berger, Linda H. Edwards & Terrill Pollman With Kirsten Davis As Moderator; And Plenary Iv: Program Design Featuring Suzanne R. Rowe, Susan Hanley Duncan, & Eric B. Easton With Brooke Bowman As Moderator

Mercer Law Review

The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & Scholarship

A Symposium of the Mercer Law Review November 6, 2009

Afternoon Session

The Curse Of Tradition In The Law School Classroom: What Casebook Professors Can Learn From Those Professors Who Teach Legal Writing, M.H. Sam Jacobson

Mercer Law Review

The typical law school pedagogy suffers from a ham butt problem. As the story goes, a woman was preparing a ham dinner when she carefully cut off the ham butt before putting the ham in the oven to bake. A friend asked her why she did that. She said she did it because her mother did it. Why did her mother do it? She had no idea. So she asked her mother, why do you cut off the ham butt before putting it in the oven? Her mother said she did it because her mother did it. What was the …

Legal Writing Scholarship, Making Strange, And The Aesthetics Of Legal Rhetoric, Jack L. Sammons

Mercer Law Review

Some of the central issues addressed at the 2009 Mercer Law Review Symposium "Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Founding of the Legal Writing Institute" involved questions about the scholarship potential of the discipline of legal writing. Those on the fringe of the academy, as legal writing professors are now and as clinicians were in the 1960s, often offer the clearest perspective on it, and in the case of the legal academy, on the practice itself. What scholarship, I wondered as I listened to the speakers, would best take advantage of this privileged perspective and of legal writing's necessary focus …

How To Use A Tube Top And A Dress Code To Demystify The Predictive Writing Process And Build A Framework Of Hope During The First Weeks Of Class, Camille Lamar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & 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 …

A Tale Of One Cali Lesson: Librarians Share A New Approach, Terrance K. Manion, Ronald E. Wheeler

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Books Related To The Law?, Eugene Volokh

Michigan Law Review

People have been reading books for over 500 years, in more or less the same format. Book technology has changed in some measure during that time. Fonts have become more readable. Books have become more affordable. Still, the general form of the book has remained much the same. But the arrival of e-readers, such as the Kindle and the Sony eBook, offers the possibility of a major change. First, people may shift to reading existing books on those e-readers. Second, the shift may lead them to change the way they use books, for instance by letting people have many reference …

Briefing Cases: Session On Copyright Law, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

This handout contains the decision from Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates, 581 F.2d 751 (1978), suggested elements for how to brief a case in general, and an example brief for the Air Pirates case.

Pining For Sustainability, Timothy M. Mulvaney

University of Richmond Law Review

In the legal academic community, there are significant positive signs demonstrating attention to sustainable practices, from course offerings to many day-to-day operations. Scholarly research also reflects this positive trend. Much of this recent scholarship assesses sustainability-focused regulatory and normative efforts to address the impacts associated with a warming planet in marked detail, and there is an additional plethora of writing on the many topics beyond the changing climate that raise sustainability questions.

Beyond The Expected: Creating And Sustaining Relationships For Your Institutions, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Tribute To Mary Lawrence, Ruth C. Vance

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Boulder Statement On Legal Research Education: Signature Pedagogy Statement, Legal Information Conference Attendees

2010 Conference (Boulder)

No abstract provided.

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

St. Thomas Law Review

This article argues that practitioners' briefs do have a place in the law school classroom. Part II of this article discusses the pedagogy behind using practitioners' briefs in the legal writing classroom. It demonstrates how using practitioners' briefs enriches lesson plans, heightens interest in the classroom, and helps students gain a richer appreciation for lawyers' goals when they write as advocates. Part III presents some different ways of using practitioners' briefs to teach persuasive writing. It examines how the author has used practitioners' briefs to teach persuasive writing of the statement of facts, point headings and summary of the argument. …

On-Line Legal Research Workshops, Frederick B. Jonassen

St. Thomas Law Review

Like riding a bicycle, playing tennis, or driving a car, legal research is a skill, and like any other skill, it is learned by doing, and not by listening to a lecture. However, lectures are indispensable for introducing the skill. The mental processes applied in electronic legal research may differ from those applied to book legal research. But because both electronic and book research are skills, a guided workshop in electronic legal research may be based on similar principles to those underlying a workshop in book legal research, with appropriate modifications. The aspects of the electronic legal workshop proposed here …

Lawyering Outside Lawsuits: Incorporating Negotiations, Settlements, And Mediations Into The Legal Writing Curriculum, Olivia Farrar, A.G. Harmon

Scholarly Articles

Legal education is built around a core irony: almost no human disputes are resolved via trials, and yet we dedicate years to teaching law students how to resolve disputes via litigation. To remedy this incongruity between legal education and the reality of lawyering, the two of us have begun integrating negotiations, settlements, and mediation into our 1L legal writing curriculum. This article describes why and how we have introduced our students to these non-litigation skill sets, starting to train them in what we believe may be their most powerful dispute resolution skills when they enter the legal world.

Writer's Block: The "Ins And Outs" Of Good Legal Writing, Part One, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Grooming Good Legal Writers Through Tailored, Constructive Feedback, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Is Our Students Learning - Using Assessments To Measure And Improve Law School Learning And Performance, 15 Barry L. Rev. 73 (2010), Rogelio A. Lasso

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

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

Faculty Scholarship

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 …