Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

The Dictionary And The Man: Garner’S Black’S Law Dictionary, Jeanne Price, Roy M. Mersky

Scholarly Works

The 7th and 8th editions of Black's Law Dictionary were the first edited by Bryan Garner.  This review of the 8th edition of Black's Law Dictionary focuses on the approach taken by Garner in thoroughly revising the dictionary and places his work in the context of the recent history of legal dictionaries and lexicography.

Aristotle’S Tried And True Recipe For Argument Casserole, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I thoroughly enjoyed John Schunk’s article— “What Can Legal Writing Students Learn from Watching Emeril Live?”—in the Winter 2006 issue. We are big Emeril fans in our family, and we too have heard him distinguish the art of baking casseroles from the art of baking cakes. Baking a casserole is more art than science, because although there are basic ingredients, a creative cook can vary the recipe to please a variety of palettes. Baking a cake, on the other hand, is more science than art, because if the cook eliminates a necessary egg or adds too much baking powder, the …

Jewish Law For The Law Librarian, David Hollander

Articles

Mr Hollander provides an introductory guide to the Jewish legal system with the intent of providing law librarians with the basic knowledge necessary to begin to help a patron conduct research in Jewish law.

“Only A Sith Thinks Like That”: Llewellyn’S “Dueling Canons,” One To Seven, Michael Sinclair

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Learning From Experience: Adding A Practicum To A Doctrinal Course, Elizabeth Fajans

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Electronic Record Sharing, Barbara A. Bintliff, Georgia Briscoe

Publications

No abstract provided.

How Do You Know When Research Is Good?, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Ms. Whisner explores the question of how to tell when research is good-or who is a good researcher

A Blog's Life, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Seeking to provide a current awareness service to an underserved part of her library's clientele, Ms. Whisner enters the world of blogging and discovers that there is both joy and learning to be had in bringing a blog to life.

Little Biographies, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Although few reference librarians do the painstaking research involved in developing full, nuanced biographies, Ms. Whisner explores how most can and do pull together little biographies all the time.

Helping Students Develop A Humanistic Philosophy Of Lawyering, Beth Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the need to help students develop a cohesive philosophy of lawyering and suggests some ideas and methods to help introduce these concepts and concerns to students. Although this Article focuses primarily on aspects of the legal research and writing curriculum and pedagogy as well as professional development programs that can enhance the curriculum, the concepts are applicable and transferable to other subjects and courses. The purpose of this Article is to explore the issues raised by a conscious decision to help students consider and develop a beneficial philosophy of lawyering in areas including the development of legal …

Uncovering The Past: Lessons From Doing Legal History, Annette Gordon-Reed

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Two Hemispheres Of Legal Education And The Rise And Fall Of Local Law Schools, Randolph N. Jonakait

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Political Advocacy On The Supreme Court: The Damaging Rhetoric Of Antonin Scalia, Stephen A. Newman

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Life Of The Law Online, David R. Johnson

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

“Ain’T No Goin’ Back”: Teaching Mental Disability Law Courses Online, Michael L. Perlin

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

“Only A Sith Thinks Like That”: Llewellyn’S “Dueling Canons,” Eight To Twelve, Michael Sinclair

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Philosophy V. Rhetoric In Legal Education: Understanding The Schism Between Doctrinal And Legal Writing Faculty, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author argues that although legal writing faculty know that what they teach is absolutely essential to their students' success, yet it continues to be grossly, even embarrassingly, undervalued in legal education. Doctrinal legal faculty perpetuate the view that legal education is a philosophical endeavor that focuses on the truth about the nature of law and, in the twenty-first century, on the law's ability to serve justice in a multicultural America. Because of their political power, however, doctrinal faculty are able to preserve the task of truth finding for themselves. Since the nature of truth is independent of its practical …

Analyze This: Using Taxonomies To "Scaffold" Students' Legal Thinking And Writing Skills, Christine M. Venter

Journal Articles

This article describes the deficiencies in current pedagogies used to teach writing in many law schools. It suggests refocusing attention on the development of students' analytical skills, and describes the use of learning theory and taxonomies to teach that goal. The author argues that by specifically developing students' thinking and analytical skills, students can become more effective writers and lawyers.

Neither Dead Nor Dangerous: Postmodernism And The Teaching Of Legal Writing, Adam Todd

School of Law Faculty Publications

This article explores postmodernism and its relation to the teaching of legal writing. Postmodernism is an undeniably important theory in literary criticism, composition and rhetoric and has provoked much debate in areas of legal scholarship, but it has seldom been addressed directly by legal writing scholars.

The teaching of legal writing has been greatly affected by postmodernism and can be characterized as a postmodern class in what is otherwise a modernist academy. Legal writing teachers generally teach in a modernist paradigm which seeks to normalize the law and create unitary meaning from the morass of texts and ideas which is …

Contract Drafting Courses For Upper-Level Students: Teaching Tips, Robin A. Boyle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)
/="/">Contract-drafting courses are gaining in popularity in law school, and they are a pleasure to teach. On July 20–21, 2005,Northwestern University School of Law provided the location and Judith A. Rosenbaum provided on-site assistance in hosting the first national conference, in recent times, on the topic of contract drafting. The conference was aptly called “Teaching Contract Drafting.” Approximately 100 participants attended, which was significantly more than the organizers expected. The conference’s large attendance indicates the need and growing enthusiasm for guidance on how to develop and teach contract drafting courses. The organizers of the conference, Susan Irion, Richard …

Redefining Open Access For The Legal Information Market, James G. Milles

Journal Articles

The open access movement in legal scholarship, inasmuch as it is driven within the law library community over concerns about the rising cost of legal information, fails to address - and in fact diverts resources from - the real problem facing law libraries today: the soaring costs of nonscholarly, commercially published, practitioner-oriented legal publications. The current system of legal scholarly publishing - in student-edited journals and without meaningful peer review - does not face the pressures to increase prices common in the science and health disciplines. One solution to this problem is for law schools to redirect some of their …

Electronic Research In State Prisons, Camilla Tubbs

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The U.S. Supreme Court And Medical Ethics: From Contraception To Managed Health Care, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Review of The U.S. Supreme Court and Medical Ethics: From Contraception to Managed Health Care (2004) by Bryan Hilliard

Tax Preparation Services For Low- And Moderate-Income Households: Preliminary Evidence From A New Survey, Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko

Articles

Recently, researchers have begun to examine the financial service patterns of low- and moderate-income households. These behaviors are of interest because high cost financial services, barriers to saving, the lack of insurance, and credit constraints contribute to poverty and other socioeconomic conditions . Many low- and moderate-income households use alterna­tive financial service (AFS) providers, such as check cashers, for their financial services needs. Tax preparation firms are among the important financial service providers in the lives of low-income households. Such firms help households navigate the complicated process of filing their taxes, and many low-income households obtain sizeable tax refunds. At …

Michigan Family Law Research Resources: Review And Update, Barbara H. Garavaglia

Articles

"Family law" includes topics relating to "marriage, divorce, adoption, child custody and support, child abuse and neglect, paternity, juvenile delinquency, and other domestic relations issues,"] including cohabitation and domestic violence. Michigan family law research continues to be facilitated by a combination of print and electronic research resources. As in other areas of law, web-based access to legal research resources in the realm of family law continues to improve and expand, following the general trend in legal publishing toward electronic publication. This article is primarily a review of the web-based resources provided by the Institute of Continuing Legal Education (ICLE), although …

Staffing For Law School Computing Services, Second Edition, Ann Puckett

Scholarly Works

Report summarizing survey responses from 158 of 191 law schools, reporting on fundamental questions pertaining to computing services within the law school.

Jewish Law For The Law Librarian, David Hollander

Articles

Mr Hollander provides an introductory guide to the Jewish legal system with the intent of providing law librarians with the basic knowledge necessary to begin to help a patron conduct research in Jewish law.

Blogging And The Transformation Of Legal Scholarship, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Does blogging have anything to do with legal scholarship? Could blogging transform the legal academy? This paper suggests that these are the wrong questions. Blogs have plenty to do with legal scholarship--that's obvious. But what blogs have to do with legal scholarship isn't driven by anything special about blogs qua weblogs, qua collections of web pages that share the form of a journal or log. The relationship between blogging and the future of legal scholarship is a product of other forces--the emergence of the short form, the obsolesce of exclusive rights, and the trend towards the disintermediation of legal scholarship. …

An Empirical Study Of Empirical Legal Scholarship: The Top Law Schools, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Empirical legal scholarship is arguably the most significant emerging intellectual movement. Empirical legal scholarship (ELS), as the term is generally used in law schools, refers to a specific type of empirical research: a model-based approach coupled with a quantitative method. This paper ranks law schools based on their place in the ELS movement and offers an essential ranking framework that can be adopted for other intellectual movements. A revised version of the paper was posted on October 11. The updated tables reflect additional data.

Library Research Labs: A Hands-On Approach To Taking The First Step With Your Students To Reflect Good Practice In Legal Education, Samantha A. Moppett, Rick Buckingham

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

In 2002, Suffolk University Law School began offering library research labs to students in the first-year Legal Practice Skills (LPS) course to give them the opportunity to tackle their first legal research exercises as part of a small group with the ready assistance of a reference librarian and an LPS professor.

This article describes the structure of the research labs and explains how they reflect the "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Legal Education" that were developed to improve student learning, enhance law school teaching, and increase faculty and student personal satisfaction.