Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

It's Not Just A Writing Problem, Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Making Irac Visible, Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus, Nancy Chanin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Where To Begin Researching Civil Rights Law, Rebecca Mattson

Law Library Faculty Works

In this article, the author discusses selected sources for researching civil rights law.

Splitting Hairs: What Subtle Distinctions Teach Us About Authority, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

Legal researchers constantly deal with issues of authority. Did the police have authority to search the car? Is this court of appeals decision binding authority on my case? What statutes are authoritative in my jurisdiction? These questions are important, and librarians often help find answers. The question of authority that librarians are best equipped to answer, however, is “How authoritative is this source?”

Open Access: Good For Readers, Authors, And Journals, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Readers, authors, and even law journal publishers will all achieve their different but related interests by adopting open access principles. Readers of every kind will have more efficient access to the materials they need to pursue their intellectual and informational goals; authors will see their works read and cited by a broader audience; and law reviews and journals can raise their own profiles without injuring their revenue streams from fee-based sources. Open access works for everyone, and is the future of information creation and distribution.

Open Access: Good For Readers, Authors, And Journals, Carol Watson, James M. Donovan

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Readers, authors, and even law journal publishers will all achieve their different but related interests by adopting open access principles. Open access works for everyone, and is the future of information creation and distribution.

Cost Effective Legal Research, Mike Martinez Jr, Katy Stein

Law Librarian Scholarship

This article discusses free and low-cost legal research resources that can help reduce the cost of litigation. A lawyer using such resources must appreciate not only the advantages of such resources, but also the disadvantages.

Teaching Rule Synthesis With Real Cases, Paul Figley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Rule synthesis is the process of integrating a rule or principle from several cases. It is a skill attorneys and judges use on a daily basis to formulate effective arguments, develop jurisprudence, and anticipate future problems. Teaching new law students how to synthesize rules is a critical component in training them to think like lawyers.

This article suggests how rule synthesis might be taught in one classroom session using real cases. It advocates a three-part approach. First, explain the nature of rule synthesis to the students. Second, do a whimsical exercise with them to show how rule synthesis works. Finally, …

Checklists: Not Just For Pilots Anymore, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Diane B. Kraft discusses how using checklists can improve an individual's legal writing skills.

Book Review Of Finding The Answers To Legal Questions, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Law & Reference: Answering Legal Reference Questions, Wendy Moore, Maureen Cahill

Presentations

Answering legal reference questions can be challenging, especially when you are not doing it on a daily basis. More and more legal information is available freely on the internet, but sometimes it is hard to know what the best sources are and how to make certain you are not accidentally practicing law at the reference desk. This presentation provides exposure to helpful internet resources and discussion of effective strategies to help you answer legal related reference questions in a non-law library setting with skill and confidence.

Citation Advantage Of Open Access Legal Scholarship, Carol Watson, James M. Donovan

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

In this study focusing on the impact of open access on legal scholarship, the authors examine open access articles from three journals at the University of Georgia School of Law and confirm that legal scholarship freely available via open access improves an article’s research impact. Open access legal scholarship—which today appears to account for almost half of the output of law faculties—can expect to receive fifty-eight percent more citations than non–open access writings of similar age from the same venue.

Citation Advantage Of Open Access Legal Scholarship, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this study focusing on the impact of open access on legal scholarship, the authors examine open access articles from three journals at the University of Georgia School of Law and confirm that legal scholarship freely available via open access improves an article’s research impact. Open access legal scholarship—which today appears to account for almost half of the output of law faculties—can expect to receive fifty-eight percent more citations than non–open access writings of similar age from the same venue.

Free Websites For Virginia Legal Research, Paul Hellyer

Library Staff Publications

It’s no secret that free websites give away content sold by high-cost subscription databases, but you might not know how useful free sites are. If you think there’s always a trade-off between cost and quality, think again. Some free resources for Virginia legal research are as good as—or better than—subscription sites. And some free resources aren’t quite as good as what you can buy, but are an option.

Should Laptops Be Banned? Providing A Robust Classroom Learning Experience Within Limits, Robin A. Boyle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)
/="/">Technology abounds today’s law students. Laptops, iPods, iPads, and BlackBerrys are just a few of the newly developed modes of communication, notetaking, and music-storing devices that creep into our vocabulary – and students’ backpacks. Given the competitive nature of law school, students understandably bring laptops to class hoping to maximize their performance. Unfortunately for all involved, students use their laptops beyond the task of note-taking. The distractions that present themselves in class have led law professors to complain on various fora about the frequency of laptop use in the classroom. Some posit that students’ inappropriate use of laptops …

Research Beyond The Obvious: An Overview Of Uga Law Library Databases, Sharon Bradley

Presentations

Describes several useful specialized databases available to University of Georgia law students.

Legal Citation Without Fear, Maureen Cahill

Presentations

Shares tips for approaching and interpreting Bluebook instructions.

Peer Editing: A Comprehensive Pedagogical Approach To Maximize Assessment Opportunities, Integrate Collaborative Learning, And Achieve Desired Outcomes, Cassandra L. Hill

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

What Great Writers Can Teach Lawyers And Judges: Precise, Concise, Simple And Clear, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Despite some imperfections across disciplines, advice from well-known fiction and non-fiction writers can serve lawyers and judges well because law, in its essence, is a literary profession heavily dependent on the written word. There are only two types of writing - good writing and bad writing. As poet (and Massachusetts Bar member) Archibald MacLeish recognized, good legal writing is simply good writing about a legal subject. "Lawyers would be better off," said MacLeish, "if they stopped thinking of the language of the law as a different language and realized that the art of writing for legal purposes is in no …

Truth, Justice, And The Libertarian Way(S), Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

More than twenty years ago, I was commissioned to write an article – my very first scholarly article – on “the ethics of insider trading” (this was hot on the heels of the Ivan Boesky insider-trading scandal of the mid-1980s).1 After tracing philosophical debates concerning the morality of exchanges based on unequal information from Cicero and Aquinas through Henry Manne and Frank Easterbrook,2 I had to decide what I could responsibly say in a scholarly work as a matter of substantive moral theory about the practice of insider trading – and derivatively what it would be appropriate to say normatively …