Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Delivering User-Centric Services At The Colorado Supreme Court Library, Robert M. Linz

Publications

No abstract provided.

Empirical Legal Research, A Growing Area Of Service For Us Law Librarians, Darla Jackson

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Robert L. Oakley: In Memoriam, James V. Feinerman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In January 1968, the New York Times Magazine printed a speech prepared by George F. Kennan for the dedication of a new library at Swarthmore College under the title "Rebels Without a Program." The response from students and teachers on the campuses was so great that a book was prepared, titled "Democracy and the Student Left." Among the student respondents was the young Bob Oakley.

The Case For "Thinking Like A Filmaker": Using Lars Von Trier's Dogville As A Model For Writing A Statement Of Facts, Elyse Pepper

Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article introduces movies as a persuasive medium. Part II examines the value of movies as teaching tools in the law school context. Part III breaks down the movie Dogville and demonstrates how it might be used to create two Statements of Facts in a fictionalized criminal case. Part IV recaps the lessons learned from using a film as a model for fact writing.

Better Revision: Encouraging Student Writers To See Through The Eyes Of The Reader, Patricia Grande Montana

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Revision is an integral part of the first-year legal writing curriculum. Students rewrite most of their writing assignments for a grade, and, in many cases, the rewrites are weighted more heavily than the first drafts. The purposes of a rewrite in legal writing, as with other writing, are to resolve any inconsistencies and fill in gaps, strengthen the analysis and reasoning, and present the information in the clearest way possible. Though legal writing professors devote substantial time to the rewrite phase of assignments, in my experience, law students traditionally treat an assignment as completed as soon as they turn …

Persuasion In A Familiar Activity: The Parallels Between Resume Writing And Brief Writing, Patricia Grande Montana

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)
/="/">To succeed in drafting a “winning” brief, you must approach it like you approach any other persuasive piece of writing in everyday life. A résumé is one such type of writing.Although many writers might not realize that composing a résumé is an exercise in persuasion, it is. The résumé’s purpose is simple: to persuade the employer to hire the applicant. Thus, a good résumé will be tailored to the needs of the employer. To achieve this goal, writers of successful résumés will carefully consider the employer throughout the planning, drafting, and revising processes. They will step into the …

The Blind Leading The Blind: What If They’Re Not All Visual Or Tactile Learners?, Robin A. Boyle, James B. Levy

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

As legal writing professors, we exalt analysis over intuition and are trained to follow the facts rather than engage in guess-work. We train our students to do the same. Yet when it comes to the pedagogy of legal analysis, we sometimes disregard our training by relying on observations and anecdotal evidence. Specifically, we may be assuming that the vast majority of our students are visual and/or tactile learners because they have grown up using computers, and we see students using computers all the time. Implicit in our assumption is that learning styles are determined by environmental factors alone or …

Lost In Translation: Some Brief Notes On Writing About Law For The Layperson, Brandt Goldstein

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

See Erie: Critical Study Of Legal Authority, Kris Franklin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Together We Can: Imagining The Future Of Employee Pensions, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing Teresa Ghilarducci & Christian E. Weller, Eds. Employee Pensions: Policies, Problems & Possibilities (LERA 2007)

A little over thirty years ago Congress enacted the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA),¹ a comprehensive reform of the existing system of pension regulation.² Solidly into its fourth decade, ERISA has been the object of much commentary as the various federal courts have struggled to infuse its complicated and sometimes imprecise pieces with coherent meaning. ³ Some have suggested that ERISA's primary goal of reducing the risk to employees of employer default has largely been achieved.⁴ Others believe that almost …

New Research Uses For Patent And Trademark Data, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

In this article, I examine alternative uses for information found in patent and trademark filing databases, suggesting ways to locate a law firm's clients, perform competitive intelligence, and locate or investigate expert witnesses. Finally, I talk about an interesting non-law use of patent data, i.e., historical research.

The Wise Researcher: One Library’S Experience Implementing A Federated Search Product, Yumin Jiang, Georgia Briscoe

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Poetry Of Law, Sidney Delong

Faculty Articles

This article examines the literature of statutory drafting. This underappreciated genre is perhaps the last place one would expect to find a sensitive soul struggling to escape the prison house of language. Yet the economic realities facing today's graduate students mean that many former lit majors will find their way onto legislative drafting committees, whence they peek out at us from under the sub-sections of their lives. It is time that this genre was formally recognized. Of course, its artists struggle against the challenge of the form and their achievements must be measured in millimeters rather than miles. This article …

In Memoriam: Joseph M. Williams, Chris Rideout

Faculty Articles

Professor Chris Rideout pays tribute to Joseph M. Williams, 1933-2008, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago and author of Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, among other highly influential works. Professor Rideout shows his appreciation for Williams' generous support and many contributions to the world of writing instruction, especially legal writing.

Unlocking The Secrets Of Highly Successful Legal Writing Students, Anne Enquist

Faculty Articles

Why are some law students successful in their legal writing classes and others are not? To identify the secrets to success, Professor Enquist did a case study of six second-year law students as they wrote a motion brief and an appellate brief for their 2L legal writing course. Based on their 1L legal writing course, two of these students were predicted to be highly successful, two were predicted to be moderately successfully, and two were predicted to be only marginally successful. Through daily records of all their activities related to writing the briefs, interviews with the study subjects, drafts of …

Reconfiguring Law Reports And The Concept Of Precedent For A Digital Age, Peter W. Martin

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Articulate Frank Allen, James J. White

Articles

Frank Allen had all of the wonderful talents that Ted St. Antoine and Rick Lempert ascribe to him. He was exceptionally smart and thoughtful (no one gets to give those fancy lectures who is not). He was a wise man (he led the faculty through the tough times at the end of the Vietnam War). And he was compassionate but tough as nails (he favored affirmative action, but was willing to close down the BAM affirmative action disruption with police if necessary-Frank's statement of his intention to call the police after the law school classes were disrupted forced the timorous …

A Tribute To Robert L. Oakley: Remembering Bob Oakley, Roger F. Jacobs

Journal Articles

A tribute to Robert L. Oakley, Professor and Law Librarian (1945-2007).

Policy And Methods: Choices For Legislatures, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

The legal methods through which one adopts and implements policy decisions profoundly affect the compatibility of policy implementation with democratic legitimacy and legal certainty of the rule of law. Indeed, the choice of legal methods can be as important as the formulation of the policy itself. While a good choice of methods will not heal a bad policy, it can help assure that a less-than-perfect choice of policy can be more forcefully realized than otherwise, it can also help improve the policy choices made and help protect democratic legitimacy and the rule of law. While deficiencies in legislation or in …

Virginia Law: It’S Online, But Should You Use It?, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

A judge asks you to present her with a copy of the Virginia Code section you are referencing in court, or she asks you to provide a copy of the Supreme Court of Virginia opinion you cited. You used Virginia state government websites to find both the code section and the court opinion. This is easy, right? You give her the copy of what you found online. But could there be a problem? Is the court opinion that you retrieved from the court website considered an official version of the court opinion? Has the Virginia Code section that you provided …

Arthur Andersen And The Temple Of Doom, Jeffrey S. Kinsler

Law Faculty Scholarship

The story of Nancy Temple ("Temple") and Arthur Andersen ("Andersen") is infamous in legal ethics. Temple was the in-house lawyer that advised Andersen's employees to shred documents on the eve of the Security and Exchange Commission's ("SEC") investigation of Enron Corporation ("Enron"). Temple's advice triggered a string of events that culminated in the needless demise of America's fifth-largest accounting firm. By contrast, my Arthur Andersen story is unknown, until now that is. In late 1999, I was offered the position on Andersen's in-house staff that Temple ultimately accepted. I declined the offer, for I suspected that Andersen was not seeking …

Insights From Clinical Teaching: Learning About Teaching Legal Writing From Working On Real Cases, Helen A. Anderson

Articles

I began teaching legal writing in 1994, but I've since had the occasional foray into practice through supervising students who represented clients in our state's appellate courts. I directed an appellate clinic for two years, and most recently supervised two students who briefed and argued a case in the Washington State Supreme Court. These experiences have taught me some important lessons that I have brought back to my legal writing classes. The clinical cases have not only reminded me what writing for practice really entails, and how hard it is to follow our sage writing advice, but they have given …

Citators: Past, Present, And Future, Laura C. Dabney

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Citators are one of the oldest and most important tools in the legal researcher’s arsenal. They serve both as precautionary measures against bad law, and as a means of doing primary legal research. The evolution of citators plays an important role in the development of both the legal publishing industry and legal research itself. This article examines many aspects of the legal citator—its history, development, uses, and possible future.

About Facebook - Change At The Social-Networking Juggernaut Creates New Opportunities For Law Library Outreach, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.