Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

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

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Scholarship By Legal Writing Professors: New Voices In The Legal Academy, Linda H. Edwards, Terrill Pollman

Scholarly Works

In this Article, the authors explore the questions of whether legal writing topics are subjects fit for scholarship and whether scholarship on these topics could support promotion and tenure. The authors examine the scholarship of today’s legal writing professors—what they are writing and where it is being published—and they define the term “legal writing topic,” identifying major categories of legal writing scholarship and suggesting criteria for evaluation in this emerging academic area.

Readers' Expectations, Discourse Communities, And Writing Effective Bar Exam Answers, Denise D. Riebe

ExpressO

This article advocates that law schools should provide bar exam preparation for students, including instruction regarding effective writing for bar exams. Using the reader expectation approach and considering the unique conventions of the legal profession's discourse community as a theoretical backdrop, this article examines effective writing for bar exams. It also provides practical recommendations for instructing students to write effective bar exam answers.

Process Reengineering And Legal Education: An Essay On Daring To Think Differently, Karen Gross

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bad Writing: Some Thoughts On The Abuse Of Scholarly Rhetoric, Jethro K. Lieberman

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

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.

Why I Write (And Why I Think Law Professors Generally Should Write), Yale Kamisar

Articles

As my colleague James Boyd White has observed, It may look as though we are all doing the same thing, as we huddle over our typewriters or computers, producing work called articles or books, but we are in fact often doing very different things, and I think it is important to recognize and value these differences, in ourselves and in others. There are not only differences in what we write but in whom it is that we write for. Unlike Professor White,2 I usually write as professional to professional. Again, unlike Professor White,3 I am fairly comfortable with "the voice …

Further Thoughts On Better Writing, Terrill Pollman

Scholarly Works

As writing teachers, we frequently witness the mystery of how writing and re-writing clarifies thinking. We teach our students to let the writing process show them the gaps in their reasoning. As student edit, they learn that paring away the superfluous allows us to see the line and structure of the argument. When a section or sentence “won’t write,” it is often because we are trying to ignore a flaw in our understanding. Form is related to content. The attempt to simplify out message teaches us what is it we have to say.

Building A Tower Of Babel Or Building A Discipline? Talking About Legal Writing, Terrill Pollman

Scholarly Works

High-quality writing is one of the crafts most necessary to a successful career in law. Mature legal professionals, lawyers, judges, and law professors write every day. Often, they write cooperatively--editing and redrafting a shared document. Nevertheless, those trained in the law may lack a common language that enables them to talk with each other about writing. Like the workers building the tower in the biblical story of Babel, legal professionals sometimes find themselves unable to communicate about their work.

Unlike most subjects in the legal academy, legal writing has emerged as an area of serious study in law schools only …

The Writings Of John Barker Waite And Thomas Davies On The Search And Seizure Exclusionary Rule, Yale Kamisar

Articles

After browsing through many volumes of the Michigan Law Review, searching for the article I would discuss on the occasion of the law review's 100th anniversary, I wound up with two "finalists": a 1955 article by Professor John Barker Waite on the law of arrest search and seizure (on further reflection, four Michigan Law Review commentaries on the general subject written by Waite between 1933 and 1955)' and a monumental 200-page article (surely one of the longest articles ever to appear in the Michigan Law Review) by Thomas Davies on the "original Fourth Amendment. 2

The Lawyering Process Program: Building Competence And Confidence, Terrill Pollman, Jennifer B. Anderson

Scholarly Works

In this article, the authors describe the Lawyering Process Program at the William S. Boyd School of Law. Like their colleagues at law schools across the country, students at the Boyd School of Law spend the early part of their law school careers learning the basics of legal research and writing. Unlike many of their fellow IL's, however, Boyd students also learn other important concepts and skills. The Lawyering Process Program at Boyd is a unique, three-semester class that includes significant instruction and experience in four areas: (1) legal writing and analysis; (2) legal research; (3) lawyering skills; and (4) …

Joe Grano: The 'Kid From South Philly' Who Educated Us All (In Tribute To Joseph D. Grano), Yale Kamisar

Articles

No serious student of police interrogation and confessions can write on the subject without building on Professor Joseph D. Grano's work or explaining why he or she disagrees with him (and doing so with considerable care). Nor is that all.

Writing And Reading In Philosophy, Law, And Poetry, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

In this paper I will treat a very general question, the nature of writing and what can be achieved by it, pursuing it in the three distinct contexts provided by philosophy, law, and poetry.

My starting-point will be Plato's Phaedrus, where, in a wellknown passage, Socrates attacks writing itself: he says that true philosophy requires the living engagement of mind with mind of a kind that writing cannot attain. Yet this is obviously a paradox, for Socrates' position is articulated and recorded by Plato in writing. How then can we make sense of what Plato is saying and doing? What …

Preface, Philip Girard

Dalhousie Law Journal

The foreword to the first issue of the Dalhousie Law Journal (September 1973) stated that the editors commenced the enterprise "without lofty pretensions." If the newjournal' s existence served "to encourage creative research and writing among law teachers, among students, and generally among the legal profession and related disciplines, that may be justification." The editors nonetheless concluded with a lofty enough mission statement: "we shall be endeavouring to produce a stimulating journal exemplifying those qualities that most people would characterize as scholarly, among them thoroughness, precision of thought, independence of judgment." The Editorial Board believes that the Journal has fulfilled …

A Writer’S Board And A Student-Run Writing Clinic: Making The Writing Community Visible At Law Schools, Terrill Pollman

Scholarly Works

In this article the author explains institutional programs she has developed in response to a common problem, students’ frustrations with the limits of a law school’s legal writing program. The author proposes establishing a Writers’ Board, where members of the law school community who care most about legal research and writing training can work together to create opportunities for students to learn more. The Writers’ Board’s primary project is a Writing Clinic that offers diverse ways to improve legal research and writing on campus. Despite problems that are likely to arise when creating a Writers’ Board and Clinic, the author …

Tribute To Jerry Israel, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to Jerry Israel

A Tribute To Jerry Israel: A Friend With A Messy Office, Debra Ann Livingston

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to Jerry Israel

Random Thoughts By A Distant Collaborator, Wayne R. Lafave

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to Jerry Israel

A Tribute To Professor Jerold Israel--My Teacher, My Co-Author, My Good Friend, Paul D. Borman

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to Jerry Israel

Bouquets For Jerry Israel, Yale Kamisar

Articles

As it turned out, of those asked to write a few words for an issue of the Michigan Law Review honoring Jerry Israel, I was the last to do so. And when I submitted my brief contribution to the Law Review I took the liberty of reading what the four others who paid tribute to Jerry had written. As a result, I feel like the fifth and last speaker at a banquet who listens to others say much of what he had planned to say.

Wayne R. Lafave: Search And Seizure Commentator At Work And Play, Yale Kamisar, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Starting in 1969,1 we have had the honor and pleasure of co-authoring a goodly number of casebooks, texts, treatises, pocket parts, and annual supplements (more than twenty) with Wayne LaFave.2 On each occasion we have been impressed by the quality of his mind and the judiciousness of his temperament, and impressed as well (and sometimes amazed) by his speed and efficiency.

Concerned Readers V. Judicial Opinion Writers, Erik Paul Belt

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this action, Plaintiffs sought a writ of mandamus compelling the offending judges to write better, but the court below denied the writ. Plaintiffs then petitioned for relief from poor writing. Because some judges do, in fact, write clear and effective opinions, we have granted certiorari to resolve the differences between the various courts. The issue before us, then, is whether judges and clerks have abused their discretion by writing weak opinions and, if so, how they can improve their writing. Because stronger writing greatly eases the reader's job and makes opinions more effective, we hold that judges and clerks …

An Introduction To Legal Reasoning, Writing, And Research Techniques; And Trial Preparation And Appellate Advocacy, Peter N. Swisher

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Francis A. Allen: 'Confront[Ing] The Most Explosive Problems' And 'Plumbing All Issues To Their Full Depth Without Fear Or Prejudice', Yale Kamisar

Articles

Frank Allen began his distinguished teaching career more than thirty-five years ago - at a time when, at more law schools than we like to remember, "the basic criminal law course was routinely assigned to the youngest and most vulnerable member of the faculty or to that colleague suspected of mild brain damage and hence incompetent to deal with courses that really matter."' That those of us who taught criminal law years later were warmly received by our colleagues is in no small measure a tribute to the quality of mind and character and intellectual energy of people like Allen, …

Lawyer's Writing, Richard C. Wydick

Michigan Law Review

A review of How To Write Plain English: A Book for Lawyers & Consumers by Rudolf Flesch

Fred E. Inbau: 'The Importance Of Being Guilty', Yale Kamisar

Articles

As fate would have it, Fred Inbau graduated from law school in 1932, the very year that, "for practical purposes the modern law of constitutional criminal procedure [began], with the decision in the great case of Powell v. Alabama."1 In "the 'stone age' of American criminal procedure,"2 Inbau began his long fight to shape or to retain rules that "make sense in the light of a policeman's task,"3 more aware than most that so long as the rules do so, "we will be in a stronger position to insist that [the officer] obey them."4