Legal Writing Prof Blog

Using readability statistics to improve legal writing

Emory professor Jennifer Romig recently wrote that statistics can help make legal writing more effective. Her Georiga Bar Journal column argues that "Lawyers wishing to improve their own legal writing or that of others may benefit from using readability statistics such as the 'Flesch Reading Ease' score and the 'Flesch Kincaid Grade Level.'" These tools, Romig explains, will make legal writing easier to read and therefore more persuasive.

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we do exist ...

 

 

 

Thanks to the efforts of legal writing professors Joan Magat, Noah Messing, and Tami Lefko, the editors of the Bluebook have agreed to include in their table of abbreviations for law journals (Table 13) two of the professional legal writing journals: Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute and Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD. LWI and ALWD have tried for many years to have their journals included in the table. The law students who create the Bluebook finally understand that scholarly journals created, peer reviewed, edited, and filled with articles researched and written by legal writing professors are sources of scholarship relied on by lawyers, courts, and other law professors, who need to know how to cite to these sources. Thanks is also due to Mary Prince, the Bluebook's coordinating editor.

Sometimes seemingly small things speak volumes (pun intended).

hat tip: Ruth Anne Robbins

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The Lawyers They Might Have Been

Here's another fine guest posting from Kristen Murray:

Over at The Faculty Lounge guest blogger Michael Madison has started a list of notables who started law school but then went on to careers in other fields that brought them fame. So far, Professor Madison and the commenters have identified Gene Kelly, Paul Simon, Harper Lee, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others. No one has speculated about their legal careers, but I can't help but wonder...what might their first-year memos have looked like?

(spl)