Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Federal Register 2.0: Public Participation In The Twenty-First Century, Lauren R. Dudley

Legislation and Policy Brief

On July 26, 2010, the Office of the Federal Register and the Government Printing Office (GPO) launched “Federal Register 2.0,” a web version of the daily Federal Register.  As of now, the site is only a prototype; therefore, “Federal Register 2.0” is not yet an official legal edition of the Federal Register, and it will not become official until the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register (ACFR) issues a regulation granting “Federal Register 2.0” official legal status.  Once “Federal Register 2.0” becomes official, the website will allow the public to receive notice of proposed agency regulations, link to a separate …

Rookie Mistakes To Avoid, Edward R. Becker

Other Publications

I'm Ted Becker from the University of Michigan. My part of today's presentation is to fall on the sword. I say that because my topic is rookie mistakes to avoid. Many of us up here on the panel aren't rookies but I certainly am. I just completed my first semester of teaching transactional drafting so I'm new to the game, and then when it comes to mistakes, oh yes, there's a bunch of them that we can talk about. Because the semester just ended, these missteps are as fresh in my mind as they could possibly be, and I hope …

Working With Kf Modified: Changes And Enhancements, F. Tim Knight, Humayun Rashid, Darren J. Furey

Librarian Publications & Presentations

Provides an overview of the KF Modified classification scheme, introduces some recent editorial changes and enhancements, and includes some interactive cataloguing exercises.

The Perils Of Hyperbole, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Diane B. Kraft makes suggestions about avoiding hyperbole in legal writing.

Animal Law Developments, Virginia C. Thomas

Library Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Getting Into The Field, Jay A. Mitchell

Journal of Food Law & Policy

A group of students enrolled in a law school clinic wanders through a large farmers' market. They stop to chat with the proprietors of a farm that has sold vegetables at the market for many years. They visit with a cheesemaker and an apple grower. A second group learns about the economic costs of organic production from a farmer and talks with an olive oil producer. Both sets of students seem unusually attentive to their surroundings. That may be because the first group helped the sponsor of the market rework the market's rules and regulations, and the second developed a …

Low Cost Alternatives For Legal Research: Using Casemaker And Loislaw, Emily Janoski-Haehlen

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Beating The Bluebook Blues: A Response To Judge Posner, Stephen M. Darrow, Jonathan J. Darrow

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Judge Richard A. Posner's recent critique (The Bluebook Blues) of the maddening hypertrophy of The Bluebook is surely a refreshing voice of sanity for the multitudes of law students and legal professionals who have had occasion to consult it. Even at Harvard Law School, the home of its founding institutional sponsor, The Bluebook's labyrinthine rules annually aggravate a fresh crop of otherwise remarkably stoic future lawyers. But while many of Posner's observations regarding The Bluebook are astute, we posit that both form and uniformity are important for citations, and we suggest citation-formatting software as a means of maximizing the utility …

Unequaled Expertise: Childress And Davis's Federal Standards Of Review, Henry Deeb Gabriel

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Abandoning Law Reports For Official Digital Case Law, Peter W. Martin

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Does The Readability Of Your Brief Affect Your Chance Of Winning An Appeal?, Lance N. Long, William F. Christensen

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Abandoning Law Reports For Official Digital Case Law, Peter W. Martin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Call To Combine Rhetorical Theory And Practice In The Legal Writing Classroom, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The theory and practice of law have been separated in legal education to their detriment since the turn of the twentieth century. As history teaches us and even the 2007 Carnegie Report perhaps suggests, teaching practice without theory is as inadequate as teaching theory without practice. Just as law students should learn how to draft a simple contract from taking Contracts, they should learn the theory of persuasion from taking a legal writing course. In an economy where law apprenticeship has reverted from employer to educator, legal writing courses should do more than teach analysis, conventional documents, and the social …

Ab Fab Legal Apps: Legal Research Applications For Handheld Devices, Sharon Bradley

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

The term “app” has exploded into general use. The term has been around for a long time as the nickname for application, or any piece of software that works on a system. Now when people are talking about apps, they are usually talking about small programs specifically made for mobile devices. Along with the explosion of general purpose apps, come many designed and/or suited for busy, highly-mobile legal professsionals.

Fantastic Facts About The 50 States: Websites For State Legal Research, Wendy E. Moore

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Sometimes you need legal information from states other than Georgia. While you may feel comfortable knowing where to look for Georgia materials on the Internet, you may be less certain when information is needed concerning Florida, Tennessee, or even Nebraska. This paper is a survey of websites that will help you locate legal information and resources at the state level.

Gateways To Legal Information: Best-Bet Internet Portals, Suzanne R. Graham

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

MSN and Yahoo! are examples of horizontal portals that appeal to broad segments of the population by providing a wide array of popular culture news. For 8 to 5 endeavors, the Web also has many industry portals or vertical portals, including portals targeting law professionals and legal scholars. Finding a portal and setting it to be one’s browser home page can be an easy way to keep up with information and to launch targeted searches from a familiar interface.

Justice Jackson And The Second Flag-Salute Case: Reason And Passion In Opinion-Writing, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

In 1943, the Supreme Court handed down West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. With Justice Robert H. Jackson writing for the six-Justice majority, the Court upheld the First Amendment right of Jehovah's Witnesses schoolchildren to refuse to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance, state-imposed obligations that the children and their parents contended were acts of idolatry that violated biblical commands. Judge Richard A. Posner has said that Justice Jackson's effort "may be the most eloquent majority opinion in the history of the Supreme Court."

What Is A Judicial Author?, Peter Friedman

Mercer Law Review

Martha Woodmansee has pointed out that

the law has yet to be affected by the "critique of authorship" initiated by Foucault and carried forward in the rich variety of post-structuralist research that has characterized literary studies during the last two decades. Indeed, . . . it would seem that as creative production becomes more corporate, collective, and collaborative, the law invokes the Romantic author all the more insistently.

Woodmansee wrote about the conceptions of authorship that legal institutions bring to bear in deciding copyright-related disputes.2 Nevertheless, the law's ignorance of the "critique of authorship" includes a willful ignorance of the …

Document Design For Lawyers: The End Of The Typewriter Era, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

This article discusses simple design rules that you can follow in documents that need not comply with court rules and some that you may use even in documents that must comply.

Outcomes & Assessment: A Golden Opportunity For Lrw Professors, David I.C. Thomson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The American Bar Association is currently discussing drafts of a proposal to shift the law school accreditation standards from inputs measurements (such as numbers of books, faculty student ratios, etc.) to outcomes assessment. While still in discussion, this shift has the potential to create profound change in legal education. For the first time, law schools may be held accountable – beyond the bar exam – for what and how they teach their students. Law schools all across the country are busy trying to determine what this will mean, and how to go about meeting the new ABA standard.