Legal Writing Prof Blog

summer reading by an LRW prof

When you pack for the beach this summer, along with your souvenir beach towel from last summer's LWI conference, now you can include something to read that was written by a legal writing professor.  Pam Jenoff, at Rutgers-Camden, has penned another intriguing historic novel, The Things We Cherished.  This one focuses on the many lives that an antique clock has touched.  You can find more information on it here.

hat tip:  Sarah Ricks

(spl)

moving up at UNH

We're happy to announce that Amy Vorenberg is the new legal writing director at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. And Jennifer Davis is now the program's assistant director. (Her photo and page aren't on the school's website yet. Congratulations to you both!

(spl)

ALWD-LWI Survey Results Released

One of the most important services performed by the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) and the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) is the annual survey of legal writing programs.  The 2011 Survey Results have just been posted on the website of the Legal Writing Institute.  Click here to see them.  They will also be available on the webpage for ALWD (who posted it first last year!).  The survey collects data from 188 law schools.  It is extremely useful for comparing programs and information about many issues important to legal writing professors.

Hat tips to John Mollenkamp and Marci Rosenthal, the 2011 Co-Chairs of the ALWD/LWI Survey Committee.  Committee members this year included Amy Flanary-Smith, Andrea Funk, Karen Koch, Allison Kort, David Krech, Rosario Lozada Schrier, Judy Rosenbaum, and Jean Rosenbluth. 

(mew)

New examples of good legal writing

The Green Bag’s list of 2010 honorees for “Exemplary Legal Writing” is now out and includes court opinions, dissents, books, and articles. These annual lists are always a fruitful source of examples of good legal writing.

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Last Call for Blackwell Nominations

The Legal Writing Institute and the Association of Legal Writing Directors sponsor a joint award in honor of the late Professor Thomas F. Blackwell of the Appalachian School of Law. Previous winners are Richard Neumann, Jr., Pamela Lysaght, Ralph Brill, Mary Beth Beazley, Lou Sirico, Diana Pratt, Linda Edwards, Steve Johansen, and Carol McCrehan Parker.  Nominations are due by 5 p.m. on July 8, 2011.  Contact Coleen Barger at the UALR William H. Bowen School of Law for more information -- she's the chair of the LWI-ALWD Committee.

 

(mew)

dateline July 4th

If you want to recall exactly what we're celebrating on Independence Day in the United States, you can read the original text of the Declaration of Independence.  You can also hear an audio version, read by familiar NPR voices, here.  You may be surprised to recall all the specific legal topics it covers.

To start you off, here's the eloquent pre-amble (which some of us had to memorize in grade school):

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,...."

(spl)