Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Going To The Experts To Move Students From Skeptics To Believers, Laura Reilly

Other Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Religious Shunning And The Beam In The Lawyer's Eye, Edward R. Becker

Articles

Some LRW professors design assignments so that students begin learning fundamental legal skills in the context of issues of particular interest to the professor-–what Sue Liemer calls “teaching the law you love.” Recent articles have explained how this might work when applied to such varying matters as multiculturalism or transactional practice. But exposing LRW students to diversity of religious belief does not appear to have found as much traction, at least in the literature. This essay describes one attempt to design a problem that grounds students in just such a larger firmament, while not distracting students (or the professor) from …

The Law Review Games, Miriam A. Cherry, Paul M. Secunda

All Faculty Scholarship

A Parody in which The Hunger Games meet the law review submission process.

Deconstructing Crac: Teaching Proposed Findings Of Fact And Conclusions Of Law In A Legal-Writing Program, Larry Howell

Faculty Law Review Articles

No abstract provided.

Not Your Parents' Law Library: A Tale Of Two Academic Law Libraries, Julian Aiken, Femi Cadmus, Fred Shapiro

Faculty Scholarship

As academic law libraries continue to face the inevitability of a rapidly changing landscape which includes a new breed of digital users with sophisticated technological needs, it remains to be seen what libraries will look like in years to come. It is certain that libraries as we know them today will have changed, but to what extent? An ability to remain adaptable and to anticipate the evolving needs of users in a dynamic environment will continue to be key for libraries to remain relevant, and even to survive, in the 21st century; vital to this endeavor will also be an …

Issues Facing Academic Law Libraries - New Challenges, New Opportunities, Linda K. Fariss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Law libraries are facing new challenges, including evolving methods of legal research, and space and budget constraints. This article explores those challenges, and looks at the opportunities that accompany changes.

Making Irac Visible, Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus, Nancy Chanin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

It's Not Just A Writing Problem, Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Degree Pedigree: Assessing The Effect Of Degree-Granting Institutions’ Ranks On Prospective Employment At Academic Law Libraries, Ashley A. Ahlbrand, Michael Johnson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the academic law library hiring process, candidates are assessed based on a variety of factors. The study conducted here focuses on education—specifically the institutional rank of degree-granting law and library science institutions—to explore how the rank of one’s graduate education might influence hiring decisions at academic law libraries.

Teaching Rule Synthesis With Real Cases, Paul Figley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Rule synthesis is the process of integrating a rule or principle from several cases. It is a skill attorneys and judges use on a daily basis to formulate effective arguments, develop jurisprudence, and anticipate future problems. Teaching new law students how to synthesize rules is a critical component in training them to think like lawyers.

This article suggests how rule synthesis might be taught in one classroom session using real cases. It advocates a three-part approach. First, explain the nature of rule synthesis to the students. Second, do a whimsical exercise with them to show how rule synthesis works. Finally, …

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

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Rookie Mistakes To Avoid, Edward R. Becker

Other Publications

I'm Ted Becker from the University of Michigan. My part of today's presentation is to fall on the sword. I say that because my topic is rookie mistakes to avoid. Many of us up here on the panel aren't rookies but I certainly am. I just completed my first semester of teaching transactional drafting so I'm new to the game, and then when it comes to mistakes, oh yes, there's a bunch of them that we can talk about. Because the semester just ended, these missteps are as fresh in my mind as they could possibly be, and I hope …

Getting Into The Field, Jay A. Mitchell

Journal of Food Law & Policy

A group of students enrolled in a law school clinic wanders through a large farmers' market. They stop to chat with the proprietors of a farm that has sold vegetables at the market for many years. They visit with a cheesemaker and an apple grower. A second group learns about the economic costs of organic production from a farmer and talks with an olive oil producer. Both sets of students seem unusually attentive to their surroundings. That may be because the first group helped the sponsor of the market rework the market's rules and regulations, and the second developed a …

A Call To Combine Rhetorical Theory And Practice In The Legal Writing Classroom, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The theory and practice of law have been separated in legal education to their detriment since the turn of the twentieth century. As history teaches us and even the 2007 Carnegie Report perhaps suggests, teaching practice without theory is as inadequate as teaching theory without practice. Just as law students should learn how to draft a simple contract from taking Contracts, they should learn the theory of persuasion from taking a legal writing course. In an economy where law apprenticeship has reverted from employer to educator, legal writing courses should do more than teach analysis, conventional documents, and the social …

What Is A Judicial Author?, Peter Friedman

Mercer Law Review

Martha Woodmansee has pointed out that

the law has yet to be affected by the "critique of authorship" initiated by Foucault and carried forward in the rich variety of post-structuralist research that has characterized literary studies during the last two decades. Indeed, . . . it would seem that as creative production becomes more corporate, collective, and collaborative, the law invokes the Romantic author all the more insistently.

Woodmansee wrote about the conceptions of authorship that legal institutions bring to bear in deciding copyright-related disputes.2 Nevertheless, the law's ignorance of the "critique of authorship" includes a willful ignorance of the …

Outcomes & Assessment: A Golden Opportunity For Lrw Professors, David I.C. Thomson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The American Bar Association is currently discussing drafts of a proposal to shift the law school accreditation standards from inputs measurements (such as numbers of books, faculty student ratios, etc.) to outcomes assessment. While still in discussion, this shift has the potential to create profound change in legal education. For the first time, law schools may be held accountable – beyond the bar exam – for what and how they teach their students. Law schools all across the country are busy trying to determine what this will mean, and how to go about meeting the new ABA standard.

New Ways To Teach Drafting And Drafting Ethics, Lisa Penland, David I.C. Thomson, Susan Duncan, Karen J. Sneddon, Susan M. Chesler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

As foreign as it can seem to not be in a physical classroom with bodies sitting in the chairs listening, it is a very different way of teaching but it can be very effective. If you go through this process of developing and dividing outcomes, dividing modules, and selecting the right technology, it can work. And that is kind of a scary thought to some people. Perhaps not people who have come to this section today or to this conference about What's Next, but for many of our colleagues, this is kind of a scary thought – that you might …

Bridging Gaps And Blurring Lines: Integrating Analysis, Writing, Doctrine, And Theory, Susan J. Hankin

Faculty Scholarship

This article is an outgrowth of the author’s participation in a July 29, 2009 panel presentation, “Change in Legal Education: Practical Skills,” at the Symposium, YES WE CArNegie: Change in Legal Education after the Carnegie Report. The article responds to the Carnegie Report’s call to “bridge the gap between analytical and practical knowledge” by presenting two models for integrating skills with doctrine in the first-year curriculum. The first model, built into the curriculum at the University of Maryland School of Law, involves teaching the first semester Legal Analysis & Writing course by pairing it with another required first-semester course, Torts, …

Law In The Time Of Cholera: Teaching Disaster Law As A Research Course, Neal R. Axton

Faculty Scholarship

Disaster law is fun to teach but it has a serious purpose. Emergencies will inevitably arise but how society responds to them will determine whether or not they become full-blown disasters. Training law students to adapt to dynamic situations will give them the skills they need in a world facing global warming, resource depletion, and a burgeoning population. By creating a more robust legal system, we can create a more resilient society.

Originally published in the May 2011 issue of AALL Spectrum.

Legal Education And Civility, Mark Niles

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Sometimes Putting Pen To Paper Is Tougher Than It Seems, Heather Ridenour, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Durham Statement Two Years Later: Open Access In The Law School Journal Environment, Richard A. Danner, Kelly Leong, Wayne V. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

The Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, drafted by a group of academic law library directors, was promulgated in February 2009. It calls for two things: (1) open access publication of law school–published journals; and (2) an end to print publication of law journals, coupled with a commitment to keeping the electronic versions available in “stable, open, digital formats.” The two years since the Statement was issued have seen increased publication of law journals in openly available electronic formats, but little movement toward all-electronic publication. This article discusses the issues raised by the Durham Statement, the current state …

The Cultural Background Of The Legal Imagination, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

I want to speak in this essay about one aspect of the origins of what is often called the law and literature movement in the United States, namely, how it got going. I shall do this by explaining the aims and assumptions of my own early contribution to it in the form of The Legal Imagination (first published in 1973). What I say will thus have some of the features of autobiography, but I hope it will be plain that this story is not really about me but about the state of the culture in which modern law and literature …

Staff Development On A Shoestring: A How-To-Do-It Manual For Librarians, Christine K. Dulaney

Book Reviews

Staff development frequently underlies a successful implementation of innovative library services and systems. As Marcia Trotta emphasizes in her book, Staff Development on a Shoestring, ongoing staff training and growth is critical to delivering first-rate library services, achieving optimal performance levels, implementing change, and preparing for the future. A program of continuing education is critical for preventing library stagnation and staff burn-out. Employees that are motivated to learn and are given opportunities for personal growth are central to a library which is implementing innovative new services and changing workflows.

Teaching Persuasion And Critical Thinking Using The State Of The Union Address, Claire May

Law Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Does It Matter What We Say About Legal Interpretation?, Karen Petroski

All Faculty Scholarship

Despite a common interest in justifying their scholarly output, legal academics have resisted seeing how their work is molded by the institutional environment in which it is produced, and not just by legal doctrine, ideology, or individual perspectives. This paper presents a case study from this neglected perspective, considering the shape of scholarship on legal interpretation in light of the social conditions of its production. After a brief discussion of the debates over whether scholarship (and which scholarship) matters, the paper explores how such concerns are addressed in various academic accounts of scholars’ textual practices. It then offers some initial …

Using Discourse Analysis Methodology To Teach "Legal English", Craig Hoffman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this study, I propose a curriculum focused on raising students’ linguistic awareness through rigorous discourse analysis and reflective writing in a legal context. Students analyze authentic, full-text legal documents using discourse analysis methodology. By carefully analyzing the language in legal opinions, appellate briefs, law review articles, law school exams, typical commercial contracts, and statutes, students become experts in analyzing and evaluating legal texts. Students learn to manipulate legal language to achieve various desired linguistic and legal effects. This approach has three primary advantages. First, it forces the students to carefully read authentic legal texts. Second, it gives students the …

Celebrating 100 Years Of The Georgetown Law Journal, Sherman L. Cohn

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It was 1911. Georgetown Law was then forty-one years old. It was an undergraduate program, as a college degree was unnecessary. Indeed, it was only a dozen years or less since Georgetown had begun to require a high school diploma for admission and had expanded to a three-year program. The degree granted was an LL.B., a bachelor of law, usually the first academic degree the student received. The school had recently grown to over 900 students. It was time to move forward.

That year, three dynamic young men enrolled at Georgetown: Eugene Quay, Horace H. Hagan, and John Cosgrove. They …

The Dogs That Did Not Bark: The Silence Of The Legal Academy During World War Ii, Sarah H. Ludington

Faculty Scholarship

During World War II, the legal academy was virtually uncritical of the government’s conduct of the war, despite some obvious domestic abuses of civil rights, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans. This silence has largely been ignored in the literature about the history of legal education. This Article argues that there are many strands of causation for this silence. On an obvious level, World War II was a popular war fought against a fascist threat, and left-leaning academics generally supported the war. On a less obvious level, law school enrollment plummeted during the war, and the numbers of full-time law …

Toward The Study Of The Legislated Constitution, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Law schools, both innovative and traditional, cutting edge and hidebound, demand and therefore teach tolerance, civil respect for those whose views and dreams differ from our own, a commitment to the equal dignity of all persons, an awareness of the individuality of each of us, and the challenges that those differences and that equality pose to the generalizing impulse in law. Likewise, law schools, virtually everywhere, convey or should convey a sensitivity to bare or naked human vulnerability, mortality, weakness, and need, and therefore a sense in students of the moral need of all of us for law’s protection, as …