Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Verb-Based Writing, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

A colleague, who has devoted most of his career to legal writing, has developed an excellent solution. In a recent talk at the University of Denver College of Law, C. Edward Good, author and "writer in residence" at a law firm, delivered a one-hour talk teaching our students that the most efficient way to improve writing is by developing "verb-based style."

The Character Of Legal Reasoning, Brett G. Scharffs

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

Embracing The Writing-Centered Legal Process, Suzanne Ehrenberg

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by Michigan Law Review for review.

For Of All Sad Words Of Tongue Or Pen, The Saddest Are “It Might Have Been”—Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology And The Law To Lock Down Culture And Control Creativity, Katherine Kelly

William Mitchell Law Review

Review of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. By Lawrence Lessig. Penguin Press, 2004. 348 pages, $24.95

A Guide To U.S. Intellectual Property Searching Online, Jennifer L. Selby

Law Librarian Scholarship

The disadvantage to searching intellectual property online, patents in particular, is that the available online databases do not encompass the array and extent of tools needed to conduct a comprehensive search.7 Essentially, you can search patents on the web, but you cannot do a true patent search. A complete patentability search must include not only U.S. patents, but foreign patents and all relevant non-patent literature also (all resources together are referred to as ‘‘prior art’’ for an invention).8 These additional resources can be researched at the Patent Office Library in Washington D.C., and, on a more limited basis, at a …

Vulcan Mind Melds And Picture Windows, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Because our words can both facilitate and block communication, they are much like glass in a windowpane. Just as a window helps us see outside, the words can help our readers see our analysis. But first, we must eliminate three main obstructions to the view : 1) mechanical erros, 2) complex wording, and 3) literary devices.

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead and Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 16, Issue 3, Spring 2004.

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead and Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 17, Issue 1, Fall 2004.

A Law Librarian's Guide To Unpublished Judicial Opinions, Joseph L. Gerken

Law Librarian Journal Articles

Mr. Gerken provides readers with an overview of the rules and practice related to the nonpublication of judicial decisions. Using a question-and-answer format, he offers a convenient reference source for librarians to consult when responding to patron inquiries about unpublished opinions. A selective annotated bibliography of articles on the subject is included.

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead, and Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 17, Issue 2, Winter 2004.

Evidence? Or Emotional Fuel?, Robert E. Precht

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following excerpt is from Defending Mohammad: Justice on Trial (Cornell University Press, 2003), by Robert E. Precht, and appears here with permission of Cornell University Press. The excerpt is from Chapter 8, "Relevance and Prejudice." The book is based on the author's experience as public defender for Mohammad Salameh, the lead suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Institutions Of Learning Or Havens For Illegal Activities: How The Supreme Court Views Libraries, 25 N. Ill. U. L. Rev. 1 (2004), Raizel Liebler

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

The role of libraries in American society is varied: libraries act as curators and repositories of American culture's recorded knowledge, as places to communicate with others, and as sources where one can gain information from books, magazines and other printed materials, as well as audio-video materials and the Internet. Courts in the United States have called libraries "the quintessential locus of the receipt of information, "'places that are "dedicated to quiet, to knowledge, and to beauty," and "a mighty resource in the free marketplace of ideas." These positive views of libraries are often in sharp contrast with views by some …

Damages As Narrative, Melody Richardson Daily

Faculty Publications

The traditional approach to legal instruction in America-the casebook method-requires students to read hundreds of appellate decisions, most of which include equally terse accounts of human suffering. How might this pedagogical approach affect future lawyers? Can reading a book like Damages help law students develop the ability to empathize with their clients?

Foreword, Helen Meyer

William Mitchell Law Review

The William Mitchell Law Review has decided once again to dedicate one issue of this annual volume to Recent Decisions of the Minnesota Supreme Court. This issue reviews some of the court’s more important decisions from the 2003-04 term. If tradition is honored, the articles and notes you find in these pages will be thorough, well-written, and thoughtful in their analysis of each decision. This annual review is a tradition that gives our legal community a wonderful opportunity to publicly comment on the work of the court. This public testing of the court’s work is a healthy part of the …

Meaning What You Say, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

In this essay I talk about a wide range of themes in the hope of establishing a connection among them: writing (including the teaching of writing) and what is at stake, for the writer and the rest of the world, in doing it well or badly; certain forces in our culture-hard to define and understandthat tend to reduce or trivialize human experience, indeed the very value of the human being; the conception of the human being, not trivial at all, that underlies our practices of self-government in general and constitutional democracy in particular; and the idea of justice at work, …

Celebrating A Diamond Anniversary: Pennsylvania Bar Association Quarterly Volumes 1-74 (1929-2003): A History, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

In celebrating the seventy-fifth year anniversary of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Quarterly, a description and some commentary upon this leading periodical of the state bar association deserve attention.¹ The Quarterly’s publication history is fairly straightforward. The first issue was published in June 1929. In the first ten years, issues were numbered from one to forty until June 1939 and so for bibliographical purposes, volumes are not included in the citations.2 Beginning in 1939-40, the volume number (11 ) was added. In the first four years the Quarterly was published in June, September, December, and March and changed to …

Advocacy As History? That Takes The Prize! Gulag: A History [Book Review], Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

Gulag: A History, the recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, may be particularly well received by lawyers and law students because they can appreciate author Anne Applebaum's writing skills. Gulag reads like a lawyer's product: a conclusion replete with facts and arguments. Those who enjoy perfecting their legal skills while reading for pleasure should read this review. Gulag is, in essence, a successful legal brief.

Queering Legal Education: A Project Of Theoretical Discovery, Kim Brooks, Debra Parkes

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The article has two parts. Part II discusses the materials we reviewed to inform the development of a queer legal pedagogy. In particular, it examines the categories of queer legal scholarship and highlights the contributions of other outsider scholars to legal education debates. Early in our research, we found limited material on queer legal pedagogy, and we discovered nothing that posited a theoretical approach. We did, however, find rich resources written by other outsiders to law from which some design principles for queer legal pedagogy might be drawn. We should note at the outset that our goal in this Part …

Restyling The Civil Rules: Clarity Without Change, Edward H. Cooper

Articles

Devoted fans and casual users of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure will feel mixed emotions on contemplating the Style Project that aims to rewrite every rule from Rule 1 to the end. Well they might. The Style Project's purpose is simply stated. The Civil Rules, created in an inspired fit of creativity, have been amended repeatedly over the years. Experience has shown that even inspired initial drafting could not avoid all misadventures and that amendments drafted by successive generations wielding different drafting tools do not always fit well. The present rules can be reworked to say more clearly what …

A Look Back On A Half-Century Of Teaching, Writing And Speaking About Criminal Law And Criminal Procedure, Yale Kamisar

Articles

When I look back at my academic career, I realize that, as hard as I tried to plan things, various events often overrode my plans.

Major Resources For The New Family Law Attorney, Barbara H. Garavaglia

Articles

While experienced family law lawyers are undoubtedly familiar with the array of research resources most useful to the family law practitioner, new attorneys and attorneys new to family law practice may need guidance in locating and identifying the most efficient and useful source material to help them in their family law work. Sherri L. Katz provided an excellent and comprehensive list of family law resources in her article "Best Research Resources on Family Law," Mich BJ79, no. 2 (2000): 196 (hereinafter "Best Research Resources"). Although the article is three years old, its excellent and comprehensive descriptions of the "best" resources …

Better Writing, Better Thinking: Using Legal Writing Pedagogy In The "Casebook" Classroom (Without Grading Papers), Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

In this Article, Professor Beazley proposes that a Legal Writing revolution is the next revolution in legal education, and that the revolution is not just coming, it has begun. She offers first steps for law school faculty to take in furtherance of this revolution. Professor Beazley argues that the pioneers of this new revolution are Legal Writing faculty. Section I of this Article examines some ways that the law school culture that segregates Legal Writing faculty has both promoted their opportunities to develop innovative pedagogies and inhibited their ability to share those pedagogies with other faculty. Section II explains certain …

Irlafarc! A Survey On The Language Of Legal Writing, Terrill Pollman

Scholarly Works

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 …

Book Review Of Mark E. Wojcik, Illinois Legal Research (2003), Jennifer Locke Davitt

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Designed as a "teaching tool rather than a bibliographic compilation of state legal research sources" (p.xviii), "Illinois Legal Research" provides practical instruction primarily to law students. It can also serve as a ready reference tool for practitioners and others interested in researching laws specific to Illinois.

Mark Wojcik, associate professor of law at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, begins with a quick review of basic legal research methods and gives tips for developing effective and efficient research skills. He transitions into in-depth explanations of Illinois law, covering topics such as constitutions, judicial decisions, statutes and ordinances, administrative law, …

Standards Of Evidence In Administrative Proceedings, William H. Kuenhle

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law Professor As Legal Commentator, Amy Gajda

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Books Received, Michigan Journal Of International Law

Michigan Journal of International Law

A list of books received by the Journal.

My Dinner At Langdell's, Pierre Schlag

Publications

This essay begins on one of those cold wet April Cambridge mornings. It was too wet for fog, but too indifferent for rain. My head ached. My lips were dry and my tongue felt bloated. The fever had surely come back. Worse - the laudanum was wearing off. Tonight would be dinner at Langdell's. It occurred to me that not everyone is invited to Langdell's for dinner - certainly not wayward law professors from the provinces. This was an extraordinary opportunity. Blackstone would be there. Duncan Kennedy perhaps. Certainly the early Llewellyn. I knocked on the door.