Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Bitten By The Reading Bug, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Is reading books about law helpful to law librarians? Ms. Whisner discusses why and what she likes to read, and makes recommendations about books others might find interesting.

Other Uses Of Legislative History, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Although we usually think of using legislative history to determine legislative intent when interpreting statutes, Ms. Whisner shows that legislative documents can be useful for other, less controversial purposes as well.

Libraries Can Help: Institutional Repositories, Yolanda P. Jones

Journal Publications

Law libraries can assist law journals beyond citation help, Westlaw and Lexis training, and gathering resources; law libraries can help with resource discovery and publication-process analysis. Specifically, libraries can guide law journals in implementing, maintaining, and expanding publication technologies through institutional repositories to stay current in this digital age.

Out Of The Shadows: What Legal Research Instruction Reveals About Incorporating Skills Throughout The Curriculum, Barbara Glesner Fines

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Rhetoric Of Email In Law Practice, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article responds to and appears alongside an article by Professor Kirsten Davis in the December 2013 issue of the Oregon Law Review. An interesting debate has arisen among legal writing faculty with respect to the primary form of communication today between attorneys, and between attorneys and clients. Although most legal writing faculty agree that teaching traditional memoranda continues to have pedagogical benefits for first-year students, there is disagreement on how to conceptualize and teach the use of email memoranda in law practice. Professor Davis argues that to think of and label “email memoranda” as something different from traditional memoranda …

Playing To The Audience, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Cognitive Conflicts And The Making Of International Law: From Empirical Concord To Conceptual Discord In Legal Scholarship, Jean D'Aspremont

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The international legal scholarship, in its quest for a paradigm able to apprehend international norm-generating processes qualifying as lawmaking, has been oscillating between static approaches and dynamic approaches. The former are based on the author of the norm (subjecthood) or its formal origin (pedigree) whilst the latter (e.g., participation) try to capture and explain the intricate and multidimensional fluxes between the authors of the norms and the norms themselves (impact or dynamic pedigree). International legal scholars have thus been resorting to various and diverging paradigms to make sense of international lawmaking. All of these approaches will be described in further …

Not-So-Open Access To Legal Scholarship: Balancing Stakeholder Interests With Copyright Principles, Christopher J. Ryan Jr.

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Last February, John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, issued a new policy designed to increase open access to federally-financed research. The memorandum, covering federal agencies with annual expenditures in excess of $100 million for scientific research and development, requires, inter alia, that: (1) agencies develop “clear and coordinated policies” to make federally- funded studies freely available to the public within one year of publication, and (2) researchers account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally-funded scientific research. In addition, the policy requires data from publicly-funded research to be stored for …

Motions In Motions: Teaching Advanced Legal Writing Through Collaboration, Sarah J. Morath, Elizabeth Shaver, Richard Strong

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Legal education is at a crossroads. Practitioners, academics, and students agree that more experiential learning opportunities are needed in law school.

In 2007, the Carnegie Foundation report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (Carnegie Report), called for law schools to provide apprentice experiences to better prepare prospective attorneys for the world of practice. That same year, the Best Practices in Legal Education advocated for “experiential education” and “encourage[d] law school[s] to expand its use.” More recently, in August 2011, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution sponsored by the New York Bar Association summoning law schools to “focus …

It's Not All Statistics: Demystifying Empirical Research, Sarah J. Morath

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Although Oliver Wendell Holmes was touting the merits of empirical research over one hundred years ago, only recently have legal academics created a journal and conference dedicated to empirical legal studies. Interestingly, topics of interest to legal writing professors have been a source for empirical research well before the emergence these specialized journals and conferences. For example, empirical research comparing the use of legal prose to plain English in appellate briefs was taking place over 25 years ago. In 1996, the second volume of The Journal of Legal Writing Institute included an empirical study evaluating which professors’ comments students found …

Motions In Motion: Teaching Advanced Legal Writing Through Collaboration, Elizabeth Shaver, Sarah Morath, Richard Strong

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Legal education is at a crossroads. Practitioners, academics, and students agree that more experiential learning opportunities are needed in law school.

In 2007, the Carnegie Foundation report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (Carnegie Report), called for law schools to provide apprentice experiences to better prepare prospective attorneys for the world of practice. That same year, the Best Practices in Legal Education advocated for “experiential education” and “encourage[d] law school[s] to expand its use.” More recently, in August 2011, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution sponsored by the New York Bar Association summoning law schools to “focus …

Lrw's The Real World: Using Real Cases To Teach Persuasive Writing, Elizabeth Shaver

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Today’s law students approach their legal education with a clear focus on acquiring the skills needed to succeed in the “real world” of lawyering. Legal writing professors can leverage this focus on the real world by using real cases to teach the principles of persuasive writing. This article describes a “case-study” method in which students analyze materials from real cases to learn the most critical components of persuasive writing – development of a theme, organization of legal arguments, and best use of case authority. As part of this exercise, students step into the role of the practitioner and construct arguments …

Motions In Motion: Teaching Advanced Legal Writing Through Collaboration, Richard Strong, Elizabeth Shaver, Sarah Morath

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Legal education is at a crossroads. Practitioners, academics, and students agree that more experiential learning opportunities are needed in law school.

In 2007, the Carnegie Foundation report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (Carnegie Report), called for law schools to provide apprentice experiences to better prepare prospective attorneys for the world of practice. That same year, the Best Practices in Legal Education advocated for “experiential education” and “encourage[d] law school[s] to expand its use.” More recently, in August 2011, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution sponsored by the New York Bar Association summoning law schools to “focus …

Why Punctuation Matters: Part Three, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Teaching Legal History Through Legal Skills, Howard Bromberg

Articles

I revolve my legal history courses around one methodology: teaching legal history by means of legal skills. I draw on my experience teaching legal practice and clinical s.kills courses to assign briefs and oral arguments as a means for law students to immerse themselves in historical topics. Without detracting from other approaches, I frame this innovation as teaching legal history not to budding historians but to budding lawyers.

Hydraulic Fracturing: Sources Of Law And Information, Barbara H. Garavaglia

Articles

Hydraulic fracturing—also known as fracking—has become increasingly controversial in the United States over the past several years, especially in states such as Michigan with large shale gas deposits that were previously unextractable. In 2012, a Michigan fracking ban initiative failed to make it onto the November statewide ballot, but citizens groups are presently collecting signatures in an attempt to get the initiative onto the November 2014 ballot as an “initiated state statute.” And, more recently, state auctions of drilling permits have been the scenes of citizen protests driven by concerns about the potential environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing.

Transactional Drafting: Using Law Firm Marketing Materials As A Research Resource For Teaching Drafting, Edward R. Becker

Articles

Since I started teaching drafting, I would like to think that I have continued to learn some lessons about teaching both the substance and the skills of transactional drafting. One of those lessons that I am going to be talking about today is one that I stumbled across by happy accident rather than one that I consciously sought. Specifically, I want to talk about and highlight the ways that law students can use law firm marketing materials to increase their understanding of both drafting and lawyering skills in law school and, hopefully, in practice.

Research Strategies, Maureen Moran

Law Faculty Publications

It is 3 a .m. and you are up, prepping for class. Again. You have reading to do for Torts, for Contracts, and for Civil Procedure, and if you fall behind even one day, you will be spending hours late at night for the next few days trying to catch up. Or, worse, you will be unprepared and that will be the day your professor will call on you. And to add to your stress, you have a research project for your legal writing class due in less than two days, and you have not even started. Your professor told …

Foreign And International Legal Research, Maureen Moran

Law Faculty Publications

As you have been learning, the American legal system is only one of hundreds in the world. Each of those legal systems has its own rules, sources, and authorities. But these systems do not exist in a vacuum. What rules govern when two or more States or entities interact? What are the enforcement mechanisms? The study of these questions comprises the fields of foreign law and international law. The purpose of this chapter is not to give you a comprehensive review of all the resources available for researching this vast field of law. Rather, the goal is to give you …

Pointing Out The Power Of Prezi, Part Ii: Learning To Use Prezi, Paul M. Birch

Law Faculty Publications

This article introduces Prezi, the online presentation software which has emerged as a most promising alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint. Part II provides a tutorial designed to acquaint the user with the basic steps in creating a presentation, and offers additional advice for effective use of Prezi.

Legal History In Context, Logan E. Sawyer Iii

Scholarly Works

The author examines the teaching methodologies involved in historical education and legal education.

The Missing Link: Making Research Easier With Linked Citations, Nick Harrell

Publications

No abstract provided.

Self-Congratulation And Scholarship, Paul Campos

Publications

Professor Jay Silver’s criticism of the reform proposals put forward in Brian Tamanaha’s book Failing Law Schools displays some characteristic weaknesses of American legal academic culture. These weaknesses include a tendency to make bold assertions about the value of legal scholarship and the effectiveness of law school pedagogy, while at the same time providing no support for these assertions beyond a willingness to repeat self-congratulatory platitudes about who professors are and what we do. The high costs for our students of the current scholarly expectations at American law schools are clear. What is not clear is whether those costs are …

Between England And France: A Cross-Channel Legal Culture In The Late Thirteenth Century, Thomas J. Mcsweeney

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Safe To Be Open: Study On The Protection Of Research Data And Recommendations For Access And Usage, Lucie Guibault, Andreas Wiebe

Books

Openness has become a common concept in a growing number of scientific and academic fields. Expressions such as Open Access (OA) or Open Content (OC) are often employed for publications of papers and research results, or are contained as conditions in tenders issued by a number of funding agencies. More recently the concept of Open Data (OD) is of growing interest in some fields, particularly those that produce large amounts of data – which are not usually protected by standard legal tools such as copyright. However, a thorough understanding of the meaning of Openness – especially its legal implications – …

A Tale Of Three Hoaxes: When Literature Offends The Law, Molly Guptill Manning

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Research Strategies And Organization, Courtney L. Selby

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Each research project is by nature unique, and thus it requires that a distinctive strategy be applied. This chapter explores the ways in which a savvy researcher can take the essential elements of a fresh search, examine answers to some critical questions related to the issue(s) at hand, develop a strategy for approaching the research process that fits the unique problem, and implement that strategy in a cost- effective and efficient way. It culminates in recommendations for organizing the information gathered so that you may convey your findings in a clear, thoughtful, and useful manner. The chapter concludes with tips …

Witness Recantation Study: Preliminary Findings, Alexandra E. Gross, Samuel R. Gross

Other Publications

In September 2012, the National Registry of Exonerations began a research study of all the cases in our database that involve post-conviction recantations by witnesses or victims. This is the first systematic study of recantations ever conducted. Its purpose is to identify patterns and trends among these cases, with a particular focus on the circumstances that first elicit the false testimony, and on the official reactions to the recantations by judges and other authorities. Our data set includes all the cases in the Registry as of February 28, 2013 – a total of 1,068 cases, 250 of which involve recantations. …

Post-Crawford: Were Recent Changes To State Voter Id Laws Really Necessary To Prevent Voter Fraud And Protect The Electoral Process?, Tracey Carter

Law Faculty Scholarship

Voter identification (ID) was the hottest topic in election law debates in numerous state legislatures throughout 2011 and 2012. In fact, in 2012, voter ID legislation was introduced in 32 states. The 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board served as the impetus for the flurry of recent changes in state voter ID laws across the country. In the Crawford decision, the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on voting, specifically upholding strict photo identification requirements when voting in person at the polls on Election Day. This article discusses the right to vote, recent voter photo ID …

Discovering E-Discovery: A Resources Guide, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

E-discovery refers to discovery in civil litigation that focuses on the exchange of information in electronic form. Lainie Crouch Kaiser, a litigation attorney with McDermott Will & Emery, writes that “e-Discovery can be used as an umbrella term for both the legal and operational considerations related to how electronically stored information (ESI) is used in the modern day practice of law.”There are many types of ESI, including e-mail and office documents, voicemail, photos, video, and databases. Attorneys and others who write about e-discovery also include “raw data” as discoverable information. Ronald J. Hedges of Nixon Peabody writes that “[t]echnically, documents …