Friday, March 16, 2007

more from Africa

Africa3_478 Conference sessions started on Thursday with a welcome by Laurel Oates and Mimi Samuel of Seattle University.  The first session, Models for Teaching Legal Writing, introduced various ways to design LRW courses as to both staffing and basic course structure.  After participants shared morning tea and ideas about how their institutions help students to develop their writing skills, the second session explored the limits of transplanting US models to other countries.  Here I am during my session on the product and process approaches to teaching writing, working with small groups during an exercise.

(njs)

March 16, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, March 15, 2007

and here's the cheetah . . .

Africa2_066 Upon noticing the many safari vehicles surrounding the scene, the cheetah takes a look at the audience . . .

(njs)

March 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

look who's here!

Africa2_074 Look who's on safari in Africa!!  Last Friday, while watching a cheetah industriously eating its tasty gazelle dinner, Jana McCreary (Texas Wesleyan) and I looked up to see Grace Tonner (Michigan), Catherine Wasson (Widener), and Camille DeJorna (ABA), in the next vehicle over.  Understand that it's important to be rested for a big event like the conference!!  Camille gave a wonderful talk about legal education at dinner this evening, so the safari apparently readied her rather nicely for the big event.

(njs)

March 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

odd law book titles: what's on your shelf?

The Law Librarian Blog has begun a contest to find the "oddest law book title." To submit your nomination, post your nominated title no later than March 23. The blog will poll its readers to choose their favorite from the nominees beginning April 2. Among the titles already nominated are:

  • Blackie the Talking Cat: And Other Favorite Judicial Opinions (West 1996)

  • The Law of Cadavers, Second Edition (Prentice-Hall, 1950)
  • No justice, no piece! : a working girl's guide to labor organizing in the sex industry / by the hell-raisin' hussies who organized the Exotic Dancers Union at San Francisco's Lusty Lady Theater
    (publisher and publication date unfortunately not provided!)

(cmb)

March 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

on the road to Nairobi

The Conference on Legal Writing Pedagogy for African Legal Academics begins tomorrow, Wednesday, in Nairobi.  About 20 American and 40 African law professors will be participating.

The road to Nairobi has been an experience, filled with safari and friends and an eye-opening look at the city itself.  I'll be attaching photos soon!

(njs)

March 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, March 12, 2007

quotable

"The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas and inhibit clarity.  With a little practice, writing can become an impenetrable fog!"

- Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes

hat tip:  Prof. Wanda Temm

(spl)

March 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

legal writing grading haiku

Last week, I was inspired to write:

Some escape from arctic blasts;
inside you have to
face that stack of trial briefs.

This week, Miki Felsenburg, at Wake Forest, wrote:

Spring Break time interfer-
ing with my doing
all the grading left to do.

P.S. to those who wrote last year to suggest this is not haiku, just doggerol:
This is a genre of its own, "legal writing grading haiku."  It mimics the most superficial format aspects of haiku and focuses for its subject matter solely on the grading of legal writing papers. 

(spl)

March 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Saturday, March 10, 2007

on the move

Next fall, Lisa McElroy will be joining the faculty at Drexel University College of Law as an Associate Professor of Law.  She'll be teaching in the first year Legal Methods curriculum, and also offering a Supreme Court Seminar.  The other professors already teaching legal writing at Drexel are Kevin Oates, Emily Zimmerman, and program director Terry Seligmann.

(spl)

March 10, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, March 9, 2007

legal writing at Harv. L. Rev.

I thought this post linked here and the comments after it might be appropriate Friday afternoon entertainment for those concerned with legal writing in the real world.

(spl)

March 9, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, March 8, 2007

logic for law students

Look out for a new article on Logic for Law Students: How to Think Like a Lawyer, due out in 2007 in the University of Pittsburgh Law Review.  The distinguished authors are:

RUGGERO ALDISERT, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

STEPHEN CLOWNEY, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

JEREMY PETERSON, U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals

You can access the full text of their article free at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=966597

And here's their intriguing abstract:

"Law schools no longer teach logic. In the authors' view this is tragic, given that the fundamental principles of logic continue to undergird the law and guide the thinking of judges."

"In an effort to reverse the trend, this essay explains the core principles of logic and how they apply in the law school classroom. The manuscript begins by examining the basics of the deductive syllogisms and then turns to inductive generalizations and the uses and abuses of analogies. The authors claim that students who master the basics of logic laid out in this article will be better lawyers and will feel more comfortable when they find themselves presenting arguments to judges and juries."

(spl)

March 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

call for papers

Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors

Call for Articles

Fall 2008 Legal Writing Beyond Memos & Briefs

__________________________

The Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (J. ALWD) invites submission of articles for its Fall 2008 Legal Writing Beyond Memos & Briefs issue.  In this issue, the Journal will publish articles about the "best practices" of legal writing in contexts other than the traditional litigation setting.  Although much valuable legal writing scholarship has focused on the memoranda and briefs that are produced in connection with lawsuits, many lawyers are engaged in other kinds of writing: they draft transactional documents, legislation, rules, and regulations; they write formal and informal opinions and correspondence; they produce essays and articles for legal scholars and practicing lawyers.

The Journal encourages submissions for this issue from law professors, practicing lawyers, and judges as well as from academics, researchers, and specialists in other disciplines.  In addition to full-length articles, the Journal welcomes essays and practice notes.  The final deadline for submission of articles is September 15, 2007.  Article selection will be completed by November 1, 2007. 

         

Topic ideas

For the Fall 2008 Legal Writing Beyond Memos & Briefs issue, the Journal editors envision that major articles may address subjects such as the following:

1.  How should "plain English" theory affect the drafting of legislation, regulations, court rules, and jury instructions?

2.  Will application of rhetorical, metaphor, and narrative theories help lawyers produce more persuasive and effective transactional documents?

3. Can empirical research help lawyers draft documents that better meet the needs of non-lawyers, including such documents as form contracts, liability releases, arbitration agreements, government regulations, and jury instructions?

4.  Does interdisciplinary theory and research suggest ways to enhance the effectiveness of other forms of lawyers' communications, including marketing, advertising, e-mails, client letters, and opinion letters?

5.  Does ethnographic and empirical research shed light on the practice of legal writing in different professional settings?

6.  Are different writing processes and critical analyses appropriate for generating effective legal documents that fall on "the other side" of legal writing?

Mission

The Journal's mission is to generate landmark volumes within the field of legal writing by encouraging and publishing scholarship that uses theory, research, and experience to propose and develop "best practices" within a specific subject area.  The Journal aims to be an active resource and a forum for conversation between the legal practitioner and the academic scholar.  To accomplish these goals, the Journal is interested in two kinds of articles: (1) articles that develop the theory and research the practice of legal writing, and (2) articles that apply theoretical and research findings from law and other disciplines to the "doing" of legal writing.  In addition, the Journal will publish selected "practice notes" designed to highlight a  strategy or technique applied in the field, a current problem or obstacle, or a new issue that has not yet received much scholarly attention.

Without compromising analytical rigor and the need to provide theoretical and research underpinnings for practical application, the Journal emphasizes readability and accessibility.  To ensure the widest possible audience, the Journal appears not only in printed and bound hard copy, published by Thomson West, but also on Westlaw and the ALWD website, www.alwd.org

Submission Guidelines

Completed manuscripts will be accepted through September 15, 2007.  The Journal editors prefer that manuscripts not be under submission elsewhere; please advise us if you are submitting your manuscript to other publications.  Manuscripts should be accompanied by (1) a cover letter summarizing the article and (2) the resume of the author, including telephone number and e-mail address.  For major articles, the Journal will consider manuscripts from 30 to 50 typewritten pages (7,500 to 12,500 words).  For practice notes, the Journal recommends manuscripts from 5 to 15 typewritten pages.  All manuscripts should be prepared in Microsoft Word 2000 or higher, using double-spacing, one-inch margins, 12-14 point font, and footnotes (not endnotes).  Hard copies should be submitted on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, printed on one side only.  Citation format should adhere to the ALWD  Citation Manual (3d ed., Aspen L. & Bus. 2006).  The Journal discourages textual footnotes.

The Journal will use a two-step review process: an initial internal review by the Editorial Committee, followed by anonymous external peer review, with final publication decisions made by the Editorial Committee.

 

Please send submissions (preferably electronic) of completed manuscripts to:                       

[email protected]

or to the following address:

Linda L. Berger

Chair, Editorial Committee, J. ALWD

Professor

Thomas Jefferson School of Law

2121 San Diego Ave.

San Diego, CA 92110

phone (619) 374-6933, fax (619) 296-4284

Submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail.

(spl)

March 6, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Sunday, March 4, 2007

the 7 deadly sins

I think I can just retire and send my students links to URLs when there are postings as spot on as the 7 deadly sins of persuasive writing.  It's exactly what we discussed in class last week, when talking about how to write an effective argument section for an appellate brief.

hat tip:  Professor Diane Murley

(spl)

March 4, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Saturday, March 3, 2007

legislative support of good grammar

Arkorangeshape A legislator in Arkansas (and graduate of the law school where I teach) has received national attention, some of it positive and some of it negative, for introducing a non-binding resolution to encourage the possessive form of his state's name to be rendered Arkansas's. I wholeheartedly agree, and I have e-mailed him the following message of support:

Dear Rep. Harrelson,

  First, let me say how proud of you we are at the UALR Bowen School of Law, and we wish you success and influence as you serve our state in the General Assembly.
  Second, as a professor of legal writing, I strongly support your resolution to direct the proper possessive form for our state's name. It is indeed Arkansas's.
  Some have criticized you, holding up the AP Style Manual as "authority." Pish. The AP governs newspaper style alone, and as we all know, the newspapers pretty much do what they want in all kinds of contexts.
  I offer you below a much more authoritative source, the Chicago Manual of Style, now in its 15th edition, and as its subtitle proclaims, it is the "essential guide for writers, editors, and publishers."
From the Chicago Manual of Style, section 6.24: "The general rule for the possessive of nouns covers most proper nouns, including most names ending in sibilants . . ." and gives among its many examples the following:
Kansas's
Texas's
Burns's poems
Dickens's novels
Marx's theories
Ross's land
and several others.
Of course, the proper noun Arkansas does not end in a sibilant, but rather has a silent s. The Chicago Manual addresses that in section 6.25: "For names ending in silent s, z, or x . . . the possessive, unlike the plural, can generally be formed in the usual way [i.e., with 's] without suggesting an incorrect pronunciation." It then goes on to give the following examples:
Josquin Des Prez's motets
Margaux's bouquet
Vaucouleurs's theorems
Descartes's works
Either way, Arkansas gets an apostrophe s.
Sections 6.26 and 6.27 discuss the two traditional exceptions to the rule: (1) the names Jesus and Moses; and (2) "[n]ames of more than one syllable with an unaccented ending pronounced eez." Examples of the latter category are Euripedes' plays, Xerxes' army, Demosthenes' orations, Ramses' tomb. Arkansas does not fall into either category of exceptions.
For those who would pooh-pooh the Chicago Manual of Style (no doubt due to some animus against economists, even though I think they have nothing to do with the style manual), I offer another authoritative source, and a legal one at that: Bryan Garner, that legal writing guru who has assumed the editor's mantle for Black's Law Dictionary, who wrote The Elements of Legal Style, and who rewrote the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, to name only a few of his accomplishments. I quote the following from Garner's The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style:
From section 1.77: "If [the word] is singular and ends in -s, add -'s unless the result would be hard to pronounce. If it is plural and ends in s, add -'." He gives the following examples:
Blackstone's Commentaries
a witness's testimony
Moses' laws
the octopuses' tentacles
As I have always told my legal writing students, you can also rely on your ear. When you make the word Arkansas possessive, you hear an -s that you don't otherwise hear. Here's how to prove it: Ask your colleagues (or any other nay-sayers) to read Garner's examples and then these two sentences aloud:
Arkansas is located west of the Mississippi River.
Arkansas's location is west of the Mississippi River.
And then you can say to them, "See? You said 'sawz,' didn't you? It wasn't hard to pronounce, and in fact, what you pronounced was the apostrophe s, just as you did in the Blackstone's Commentaries example."

Therefore, soldier on, brave one! I am behind you all the way! And you can quote me on that.
Best regards,
Coleen Barger

March 3, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, March 1, 2007

punchy first lines

Boxing Today on the Legal Writing Institute's listserv, University of Missouri-Columbia's legal writing prof John Mollenkamp shared a wonderful lead from a news story to illustrate to students the impact of starting a brief's fact statement "with a punch" (quoting Richard Neumann). This one successfully draws the reader in and keeps her reading. Here's the first line of that story:

"A jazz musician was injured Friday after jumping from a burning motor home driven by a one-time roller skating stripper from Lodi."

Prof. Mollenkamp credits humorist Dave Barry’s blog for bringing the story to his attention. (You remember Barry, don't you? Mr. Language Person?) We thank everyone responsible for inspiring and sharing this gem.

(cmb)

March 1, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)