Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

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, …

Paper Tectonics, Patrick O. Gudridge

Articles

No abstract provided.

Commas And Colons And Semicolons - Oh My! 10 Rules To Remember, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Kraft provides ten helpful grammar rules for commas. colons, and semicolons.

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 …

Acknowledging Our Roots: Setting The Stage For The Legal Writing Institute, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article discusses the history and development of legal writing courses and the Legal Writing Institute.

A Tribute To Mary Lawrence, Ruth C. Vance

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Statutory Interpretation In The Age Of Grammatical Permissiveness: An Object Lesson For Teaching Why Grammar Matters, Susan J. Hankin

Faculty Scholarship

This article uses an unpublished case interpreting New York’s animal cruelty law as an object lesson to teach why grammar matters. In People v. Walsh, 2008 WL 724724 (N.Y. Crim. Ct. Jan. 3, 2008), the court’s interpretation of the statute turned, in part, on the serial comma rule (sometimes called the “Oxford comma” rule). The court followed a mandatory approach to interpret the statute’s meaning, even though most contemporary grammar and style books make such use of a comma optional. One of the many benefits of using a case example to teach why grammar matters is that it focuses students …

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. …

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 …

When The Truth And The Story Collide: What Legal Writers Can Learn From The Experience Of Non-Fiction Writers About The Limits Of Legal Storytelling, Jeanne M. Kaiser

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines what can be gained and what can be lost by using storytelling in legal writing. After reviewing some basic principles of legal storytelling, the Article reviews some lessons that can be learned from the experience of the New Journalists who adopted literary techniques in their non-fiction work. In the end, the Author concludes that while there is much value in using the tools of fiction in legal writing, it is only with a blend of narrative and analysis that we most successfully do our jobs as lawyers.

Where Have All The (Legal) Stories Gone?, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This essay examines whether law schools are doing a good job of teaching the art of storytelling to law students.

The Benefits Of Podcasting, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article discusses the benefits of podcasting in legal writing courses, based on the author's participation in CALI's 2005 inaugural podcasting project.

Practice Writing: Responding To The Needs Of The Bench And Bar In First-Year Writing Programs, Amy Vorenberg, Margaret Sova Mccabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

Do first year legal writing programs really prepare law students for the rigors of practice writing? This article begins to answer this question based on attorney and judge survey results, as well as interviews with judges who had also read student work in preparation for their interview. We found that while legal writing programs do provide a good foundation for legal writing skills, improvement can be made. Important changes that we have made at Pierce Law include shorter, more frequent assignments, variation/flexibility in choice of organizational paradigm, understanding the difference between settled and unsettled areas of law, and increased emphasis …

"The Real World": Creating A Compelling Appellate Brief Assignment Based On A Real-World Case, Elizabeth Inglehart, Martha Kanter

Faculty Working Papers

Creating an appellate brief problem that is realistic, balanced, and interesting for students to work on is one of the most challenging opportunities facing a legal analysis and writing professor. Developing such a problem is particularly important because many legal writing courses use an appellate brief problem throughout an entire law school semester, usually requiring students to write at least one, and often two, appellate briefs based on the problem, and to argue that case in a moot court. This article provides advice, drawn from the authors' experience as professor of legal analysis and writing, as to how to develop …

How Embedded Knowledge Structures Affect Judicial Decision Making: An Analysis Of Metaphor, Narrative, And Imagination In Child Custody Disputes, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

We live in a time of radically changing conceptions of family and of the relationships possible between children and parents. Though undergoing "a sea-change," family law remains tethered to culturally embedded stories and symbols. While so bound, family law will fail to serve individual families and a society whose family structures diverge sharply by education, race, class, and income.

This article advances a critical rhetorical analysis of the interaction of metaphor and narrative within the specific context of child custody disputes. Its goal is to begin to examine how these embedded knowledge structures affect judicial decision making generally; more specifically, …

". . . See Erie.": Critical Study Of Legal Authority, Kris Franklin

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

Good citation requires critical analysis because well-supposed legal analysis requires a layered understanding of how legal authority may be used in different ways. Simultaneously, it demands good judgment in making the best decisions about how to introduce and employ the relevant cases on a particular case. Teaching how to cite legal authorities includes framing because all legal authorities are potential tools for argument. In deciding whether and how to deploy cases, statutes, and other forms of legal authority, advocates must resolve two interrelated questions in rapid sequence:

1. Can I frame or characterize the authority in question in a particular …

U.S. Supreme Court Interviews On Effective Legal Writing – Part Iii, Robert S. Anderson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This column concludes a three-part discussion of legal writing interviews given by eight of the nine sitting justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices discussed usage and grammar issues, as well as their own pet peeves as readers of legal writing.

U.S. Supreme Court Interviews On Effective Legal Writing – Part Ii, Robert S. Anderson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This column continues a three-part discussion of legal writing interviews given by eight of the nine sitting justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition to discussing the elements of effective legal writing, the justices talked about their own writing processes.

U.S. Supreme Court Interviews On Effective Legal Writing – Part I, Robert S. Anderson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This column begins a three-part discussion of legal writing interviews given by eight of the nine sitting justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. This first part explores the two aspects of good legal writing that were the most often mentioned by the justices during their interviews: clarity and conciseness.

From Snail Mail To E-Mail: The Traditional Legal Memorandum In The Twenty-First Century, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

More Than Just Law School: Global Perspectives On The Place Of The Practical In Legal Education, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Foreign experiences remind us that legal education is not just law school. They inform us that we should seek for ways not just to integrate theoretical and practical teaching, but to assure that our students or our graduates get real experience with practice. The assumption that law schools are the exclusive place for preparation for the profession of law is bad for students, bad for bar, bad for law schools, bad for the legal system and bad for society. We should look to see what we can do best and should encourage other institutions to do what they can do …

Implementing Plain Language Into Legal Documents: The Technical Communicator's Role, Peggy Bivins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the benefits of using plain language in legal documents and the role technical communicators can play to help implement plain language. Although many definitions for plain language exist, it is best described as reader-focused communication that presents information in a manner that makes it easy for a reader to find, understand, and use the information. Plain language facilitates comprehension by using shorter, less complex sentences; active voice; and common words. All these elements aid in processing and understanding information, especially unfamiliar concepts. Laypeople, unversed in the law, frequently have difficulty understanding traditional legal writing. The complex sentences, …

Using Actual Legal Work To Teach Legal Research And Writing, Michael A. Millemann

Faculty Scholarship

Legal research and writing (LRW) teachers should use actual legal work to teach their courses, including (indeed, especially) first-year courses. The legal work might come from a planned or ongoing lawsuit, transaction, or other matter. What is important is that it is real, although in my model, the teacher can add hypothetical features to customize the legal work to the particular LRW course. For example, in an appellate advocacy course, the teacher could present the legal issues arising out of a pretrial matter by summarily “deciding” them in a hypothetical trial court opinion, thus allowing the students to fully explore …

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes the Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 21, Issue 1, Fall 2008.

Developing Internal Consistency In Writing Assignments By Involving Students In Problem Drafting, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article addresses a legal writing teaching strategy that helps students develop internal consistency in their legal documents with respect to issue, facts, and law. The teacher recounts the effect of her classroom experience by splitting her students into groups, assigning various legal issues, and then having the students draft their own fact situations.

From Snail Mail To E-Mail: The Traditional Legal Memorandum In The Twenty-First Century, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Traditional legal memoranda have been used to teach objective analysis since the inception of legal writing programs in the 1970's. The continued use of these memoranda in the legal writing classroom leads law students to believe that traditional memoranda are still the primary form of communication between attorney and client. A 2006 survey of Georgetown University Law Center graduates, however, suggests that the traditional legal memorandum is all but dead in law practice. Seventy-five percent of the graduates surveyed said they write no more than three traditional memoranda per year. Instead, these graduates are more likely to communicate with clients …

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.

See Erie: Critical Study Of Legal Authority, Kris Franklin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Legal Writing Triage: Self-Edit To Solve The Most Common Style Problems, Robert S. Anderson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses one of the most common style problems in legal writing: subject-verb issues that produce confusing or overlong sentences. It then prescribes a simple approach to curing the problem in quick, step-by-step fashion.