Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Legal Writing, Therapeutic Jurisprudence, And Professionalism, Shelley Kierstead

Articles & Book Chapters

“Professionalism as a personal characteristic is revealed in an attitude and approach to an occupation that is commonly characterized by intelligence, integrity, maturity, and thoughtfulness.”

“Words are the principal tool of lawyers and judges, whether we like it or not.”

The quotes above refer to two quintessential aspects of lawyers’ work. First, as members of a self-regulated profession, we must aspire to a level of professionalism that is characterized by intelligence, maturity, and thoughtfulness. Second, regardless of the tasks we undertake, words are critically important to lawyers. Not only must we be able to conduct comprehensive and coherent legal analysis; …

Meeting The Challenges Of Instructing International Law Graduate Students In Legal Research, Nina E. Scholtz, Femi Cadmus

Faculty Scholarship

Teaching international LL.M. students legal research offers its own peculiar challenges. The brevity of the LL.M. program and the limited time available for thoroughly introducing basic research concepts have made it particularly difficult, but the innovative and creative methods of instruction highlighted in this article have provided good solutions.

Legal Writing: A History From The Colonial Era To The End Of The Civil War, David R. Cleveland

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Many Texts Of The Law, Michael Davis, Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

This paper contends that even as jurists invoke the official canonic version of the legal text, it is in danger of being replaced for the jurist, as well as for the lay person, if it has not been substituted already, by some apocryphal, inauthentic or casual text. We argue that in addition to the approximate nature of legal knowledge, the overuse of overedited and perverted casebooks, as well as the distribution of legal information among imperfect sources – some official but partial, others inauthentic but highly accessible, and a few reliable but highly unaffordable commercial sources – are largely responsible …

Mexican Law And Legal Research, Julienne Grant, Jonathan Pratter, Bianca Anderson, Marisol Floren-Romero, Jootaek Lee, Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Teresa Miguel-Stearns, Sergio Stone

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

To Abbreviate Or Not To Abbreviate: A Perspective On Administrative Agency Bluebook Citations, Taryn L. Rucinski

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

For students and practitioners, one of the most confusing issues posed today by The Bluebook lies in when and how to abbreviate federal and state administrative agency names. Or to put it another way: Do I use: EPA, E.P.A., Envtl. Protection Agency, or U.S. Envtl. Protection Agency?

Writing (And Reading) Appellate Briefs In The Digital Age, Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

In this essay, Professor Beazley briefly reviews a slice of the voluminous research about how human beings read digital as opposed to paper text. In particular, she discusses studies of knowledge workers (defined to include those who use or generate knowledge in their work)4 and those who engage in active reading (defined as a reading process that includes nonsequential reading, searching a text, comparing texts, annotating, bookmarking, and the like).She concludes by making suggestions for legal readers, legal writers, courts, and database providers as to how best to accommodate the process of digital reading.

Hiding In Plain Sight: "Conspicuous Type" Standards In Mandated Communication Statutes, Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

Professor Beazley defines the concept of mandated communication statutes in this examination of typeface, language, and the mind's ability to comprehend certain syntax. This article has a simple premise: when a government mandates written communication, it should present the mandated communication in a way that speeds comprehension. When communication is so important that the government is mandating the words and the presentation method, the writer and not the reader should not bear the burden of making sure that the information is comprehensible. In other words, the reader should not have to work to decipher the information; the writer should work …

The Trouble With Categories: What Theory Can Teach Us About The Doctrine-Skills Divide, Linda H. Edwards

Scholarly Works

We might not need another article decrying the doctrine/skills dichotomy. That conversation seems increasingly old and tired. But like it or not, in conversations about the urgent need to reform legal education, the dichotomy’s entailments confront us at every turn. Is there something more to be said? Perhaps surprisingly, yes. We teach our students to examine language carefully, to question received categories, and to understand legal questions in light of their history and theory. Yet when we talk about the doctrine/skills divide, we seem to forget our own instruction.

This article does not exactly take sides in the typical skills …

Toward A Jurisprudence Of The Civil Rights Acts, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What is the nature of the “rights,” jurisprudentially, that the 1964 Civil Rights Act legally prescribed? And, more generally, what is a “civil right”? Today, lawyers tend to think of civil rights and particularly those that originated in the 1964 Act, as antidiscrimination rights: our “civil rights,” on this understanding, are our rights not to be discriminated against, by employers, schools, landlords, property vendors, hoteliers, restaurant owners, and providers of public transportation, no less than by states and state actors, on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality or disability. Contemporary civil rights scholarship overwhelmingly reflects the same conception: …

The Accidental Archivists: Lessons Learned From A Digital Archive Project, Robert Linz, Karen Selden, Georgia Briscoe

Publications

This article tells the story of the University of Colorado Law Library’s successful effort to develop its first digital archive. The sudden death of the Law School’s Dean was the catalyst for this project, with a goal to unveil the archive at a memorial symposium scheduled nine months in the future. The Law Library staff had never tackled a project of this type or scale before. This article discusses the technological, cataloging and management issues which were encountered during the project. It also provides advice and tips on how librarians in their own institutions can accomplish such a project.

The 4-1-1 On Lawyer Directories, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Directories listing biographical and contact information for attorneys have been a publishing mainstay for more than one hundred years. They are used for marketing, as well as historical and genealogical research. However, technology is changing the way attorneys advertise, and Ms. Whisner looks at the current state of lawyer directories and their usage.

Getting To Know Fastcase, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Librarians must learn how to use databases on a regular basis. The databases may be new, or they may be well-established ones that librarians haven’t used before. Ms. Whisner examines Fastcase, an online system that recently entered into a cooperative agreement with HeinOnline, and discovers some lessons about how she learns new databases.

The Changing Discourse Of The Supreme Court, Stephen M. Johnson

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Academics, judges, and other commentators complain that, for the past few decades, the Justices on the Supreme Court have been increasingly writing opinions that are unreadable for most American citizens. Those critics complain that the opinions are too long and too complex, riddled with incomprehensible multi-part tests. They also attack the style of the opinions and assert that recent opinions are more likely to be written in a technocratic, rather than persuasive, style.

There seems to be little consensus among the critics regarding why the Justices are writing opinions that are increasingly unreadable. Some attribute it to the increasing …

A Writing Revolution: Using Legal Writing's 'Hobble' To Solve Legal Education's Problem, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The attached article responds to a 2011 article by John Lynch, published in the Journal of Legal Education, that urged legal writing faculty to return to an outmoded and ineffective writing pedagogy, the “product approach,” on the grounds that it would make teaching legal writing easier. This article builds on the work of Carol McCrehan Parker and others interested in writing across the curriculum and argues that the only way to reduce legal writing’s “hobble” and to solve legal education’s problem is to create a six-semester writing requirement. The reason law students are graduating without adequate preparation for practice is …

Scholarly Incentives, Scholarship, Article Selection Bias, And Investment Strategies For Today's Law Schools, Dan Subotnik, Laura Ross

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Scholarship In Law Schools, Fabio Arcila Jr.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Converting Benchslaps To Backslaps: Instilling Professional Accountability In New Legal Writers By Teaching And Reinforcing Context, Heidi K. Brown

Articles & Chapters

A search in published and unpublished court decisions for derivations of phrases like "poorly written brief" or "failure to follow court rules" yields an alarming multitude of case opinions in which judges admonish lawyers of all levels of experience for shoddy briefs or for flouting non-negotiable substantive and procedural rules. Legal bloggers have affectionately dubbed these public reprimands "benchslaps."

Section I of this article provides a contextual background that professors and practitioners can share with rookie legal writers, using judicial opinions to demonstrate the eight most-common ways that attorney work product falls short of judges' expectations and, more importantly, how …

"The Evolution Of Government Documents", Jennifer Morgan

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

Law Librarianship in the 21st Century, a text for library and information science courses on law librarianship, introduces students to the rapidly evolving world of law librarianship. With no prior knowledge of the law required, students using this book will find practical answers to such questions as: What is law librarianship? How do you become a law librarian? How does law librarianship interrelate with the legal world? Individual chapters provide a concise treatment of such specialized topics as the history of law librarianship, international law, and government documents. Standard topics are dealt with as they apply to the law library, …

Morris L. Cohen: A Bibliography Of His Works, Camilla Tubbs

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.