Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Shot Selection, Patrick Barry

Articles

One of the more common pieces of writing advice in our post-Hemingway world is to keep sentences short. Experts on legal writing are particularly fond of this Position — and for good reason. Few judges look at the sentences that appear in briefs, memos, statutes, and contracts and say, "You know what each of those could use? More words." Professor Noah Messing does a particularly good job making the case for short sentences. Brevity, he explains, "reduces the risk that your writing will confuse or irk readers," especially given that "empirical studies show that writing verbosely makes writers sound dumber …

Topic Modeling The President: Conventional And Computational Methods, J.B. Ruhl, John Nay, Jonathan Gilligan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Legal and policy scholars modeling direct actions into substantive topic classifications thus far have not employed computational methods. To compare the results of their conventional modeling methods with the computational method, we generated computational topic models of all direct actions over time periods other scholars have studied using conventional methods, and did the same for a case study of environmental-policy direct actions. Our computational model of all direct actions closely matched one of the two comprehensive empirical models developed using conventional methods. By contrast, our environmental-case-study model differed markedly from the only empirical topic model of environmental-policy direct actions using …

Law Library Blog (August 2018): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Talented But Overlooked, Heidi K. Brown

Articles & Chapters

We should transform hiring and mentoring of introverted lawyers.

Alliteration, Restraint, And A Mind At Work, Patrick Barry

Articles

Alliteration is great—until it’s not. You can pretty quickly overdo it, though I don’t think any major professional sports franchise has yet. The Boston Bruins, the Seattle Seahawks, the Cleveland Cavaliers: these names all have a nice ring to them. As do countless others, from the Washington Wizards to the Tennessee Titans to the Buffalo Bills. The sounds run quickly off your tongue and not unpleasantly into the air. They’re not irritating or obnoxious—unless maybe you’re a fan of the opposing team.

Show And Tell, Patrick Barry

Articles

“Show don’t tell.” Teachers preach these words. Style guides endorse them. And you’d be hard pressed to find any editor or law firm partner who hasn’t offered them as feedback in the last year, month, week, maybe even day. There’s only one problem: “Show don’t tell” is bad advice. Or at least, it is incomplete advice.

Paragraphing, Patrick Barry

Articles

Consider treating the word paragraph as a verb. Think of it as something you can do well or poorly, with major consequences for your readers. Good paragraphers, for example, help readers. They make it easy to navigate and absorb information. They don’t flit around, hastily moving on to the next point before fully supporting their first. Nor do they get stuck for too long in one place. Instead, they give a lot of thought not just to the ideas but also to their arrangement—their shape, their balance, their pace.

A Content Analysis Of Section 1983 Litigation Against Reserve Police Officers, Michael Ryan Broadus

Master's Theses

Police studies have well developed a demonstrative framework for detailing risks which generate financially-detrimental civil litigation – particularly regarding 42 U.S.C. §1983. Conversely, though, police studies have given little attention to the often-used but differentially-trained reserve police officer. Primarily replicating the methodologies of Kappeler, Kappeler, and del Carmen (1993) and Ross (2000), this descriptive study sought to fill this void via a manifest content approach to purposively select a sample of Section 1983 cases decided by U.S. District Courts over a 16-year period (2001-2016) to determine: (1) if significant liability was generated by reserve officers, (2) the main basis for …

Ida B. Wells: Fearless Journalist From Memphis Who Changed The World, David L. Hudson Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

"Today's climate features hostility toward freedom of the press and negative attitudes toward journalists ... [T]here was a time when journalists were admired for their fearless pursuit of the truth and their exposure of corruption." This article provides an overview of the life and work of Ida B. Wells, particularly her work as a journalist and activist.

Bepress & Ssrn Pilot Presentation, Carol A. Watson, Thomas J. Striepe

Presentations

A panel discussion announcing and sharing information about the joint pilot project exploring the integration between bepress and SSRN platforms launched in March 2018.

Judges And Their Editors, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Tweets To A Young 1l, Rachel I. Gurvich

Faculty Publications

A series of eleven tweets ruminating about the author's law school experience received a positive and enthusiastic response from many lawyers, law professors, and law students, and ultimately caught the eye of one of the Green Bag’s editors. This short piece unpacks and contextualizes those tweets. The original tweets appear below, numbered as they first appeared on Twitter.

Redefining Roles And Duties Of The Transactional Lawyer: A Narrative Approach, Lori D. Johnson

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article posits that narrative theory can assist the transactional lawyer in walking this tightrope effectively and ethically.

Specifically, this Article proceeds to show that the use of narrative techniques, specifically those proposed by Walter Fisher, can assist transactional lawyers: (1) in understanding their clients’ goals more fully; (2) in more effectively advancing their clients’ goals through persuasion; and (3) in creating complete, holistic documents to govern the proposed deal. As such, the appropriate use of narrative techniques and understanding of narrative theory can enhance the skills of transactional lawyers, and improve client outcomes.

This Article proceeds in three …

De-Grading Assessment: Rejecting Rubrics In Favor Of Authentic Analysis, Deborah L. Borman

Seattle University Law Review

Assigning grades is the least joyful duty of the law professor. In the current climate of legal education, law professors struggle with issues such as increased class size, providing “practice-ready” graduates, streamlining assignments, and accountability in assessment. In an effort to ease the burden of grading written legal analyses, individual professors or law school writing programs or both may develop articulated rubrics to assess students’ written work. Rubrics are classification tools that allow us to articulate our judgment of a written work. Rubrics may be as extensive as twenty categories and subcategories or may be limited to only a few …

Battling Fake News And Developing Digital Literacy Skills In The Legal Profession, Carol A. Watson, Caroline Osborne, Kris Niedringhaus

Presentations

Alternative facts? Truthiness? Post Truth? Hardly a day passes without someone making a reference to fake news. But why should lawyers care and what can information technology professionals and the legal academy do about it?
In order to fulfil a lawyer's duty of technology competency, digital information literacy is essential. Legal professionals must be able to locate, evaluate and use online information effectively. Evaluation of the reliability of digital information is a complex skill that must be mastered for the successful practice of law.
This program will discuss digital information literacy in the context of fake news. The session will …

Diversity Attorney Pipeline Program - Legal Research, Anne Hudson, Heather Hummons

College of Law Faculty

Living your best (Research) Life: How to Quickly and Efficiently Perform Legal Research. A Bootcamp for scholars from law schools across the country.

W&L Law Library Annual Report 2017-2018, The Law Library At Washington And Lee University School Of Law

Law Library Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents And Masthead, Cameron Fraser

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Better Briefs, Lydia Fearing

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Abstract forthcoming

Brief Of The Legal Aid Society, Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, Community Service Society Of New York, Center On The Administration Of Criminal Law At New York University School Of Law, Center On Race, Law And Justice At Fordham University Law School, Katal Center For Health, Equity, And Justice, And Brooklyn Community Bail Fund In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant, Zohra Ahmed, Cynthia Conti-Cook

Faculty Scholarship

In upholding the constitutionality of the officers’ prolonged detention of Mr. Vargas, the lower court inaccurately assumed that Mr. Vargas was labeled a “transit recidivist” by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) as a result of either an open warrant or a prior conviction.3 The amici submit this brief to correct this misconception.4 The NYPD actually labels New York subway riders “transit recidivist” based on a much broader, constitutionally compromised database that includes prior arrests and summons that have been dismissed, declined prosecution or otherwise terminated in favor of the accused.

Using Appellate Clinics To Focus On Legal Writing Skills, Timothy Pinto

Articles

Five years ago, I went to lunch with a colleague. I was teaching a legal writing course to 1L students, and he taught in a clinic in which 2L and 3L students were required to write short motions and briefs. Several of his students had taken my writing class as 1Ls, and he had a question for me. "What the heck are you teaching these students?" he asked as we sat down. He explained that several of his students were struggling with preparing simple motions. They were not laying out facts clearly. They were not identifying key legal rules. In …

Opinions In Context: An Exploration Of The Rhetoric Used By Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia And Ruth Bader Ginsburg Regarding The Separation Of Church And State, Catherine Evans

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg represented opposite ends of the political spectrum on the Court, having been appointed by presidents from different parties. Their opinions on cases revolving around the interpretation of separation of church and state do/did not occur within a vacuum, and this paper examines both the context surrounding these opinions and rhetoric of the opinions themselves, closing with a discussion of the former’s effect on the latter. Specifically, four cases (two for each) from the beginning and end of the justices’ careers will be analyzed: Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board v. Pinette …

The Pro Bono Collaborative Project Spotlight: Pro Bono Collaborative Aci Civil Legal Clinics Project Expands To Women's Facility (05-03-2018), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Pro Bono Collaborative Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

“And/Or” And The Proper Use Of Legal Language, Ira P. Robbins

Maryland Law Review

The use of the term and/or is pervasive in legal language. Lawyers use it in all types of legal contexts—including statutes, contracts, and pleadings. Beginning in the 1930s, however, many judges decided that the term and/or should never be used in legal drafting. Ardent attacks on the term included charges that it was vague, if not meaningless, with some authorities declaring it to be a “Janus-faced verbal monstrosity,” an “inexcusable barbarism,” a “mongrel expression,” an “abominable invention,” a “crutch of sloppy thinkers,” and “senseless jargon.” Still today, critics maintain that the construct and/or is inherently ambiguous and should be avoided …

Legal Corpus Linguistics: Gambling To Gaming Language Powers And Probabilities, Kezziah Dale

UNLV Gaming Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Good Critical Reading Strategies Can Improve Legal Writing, Jane Bloom Grisé

Law Faculty Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (May 2018): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

You Could Have Told Me That In The First Place: Five Tips That Might Have Saved A Young Lawyer A Lot Of Trouble, Jay O'Keeffe

University of Richmond Law Review

I will open with a confession: I have very, very little to contribute to legal scholarship. My day-to-day work as a lawyer and a parent keeps me busy. My career to date as a generalist has not led me to develop any great substantive expertise in a particular area of the law. Even my war stories are boring because they cluster around briefs, procedural defaults, and oral arguments. But I do have one thing to offer. I have been lucky in my career to work in “Biglaw,” then at a medium-sized firm of about fifty lawyers, and most recently at …

"Fear Itself": What Legal Writers Can Learn From Fdr's Iconic Moment, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This article concerns President Roosevelt's timeless faceoff with fear from the inaugural podium in the depths of the Great Depression. After surveying the dire national emergency that faced the new administration more than eight decades ago, the article draws lessons about sound rhetoric for today's legal writers.

What We Still Don't Know About What Persuades Judges – And Some Ways We Might Find Out, Edward R. Becker

Articles

Over 25 years ago, in his foreword to the first volume of Legal Writing, Chris Rideout nailed it: legal writing as actually practiced by lawyers and judges needs to improve, “[b]ut more fundamental inquiry into legal writing...is needed as well.” The intervening decades have seen many laudable efforts on the latter front, as our collective scholarly discipline, then in its infancy, has matured. But one particular question that Rideout identified remains largely unaddressed by our discipline, although recent developments suggest a welcome increase in attention to the topic. Specifically, Rideout explained that our field did not know as much as …