Legal Writing Prof Blog

Burton Awards 2015

The Burton Awards for Excellence in Legal Writing is, without a doubt, the single most glamorous evening for legal writing. That's been true for years, and the 2015 award ceremony promises to continue that trend.  It will be held at 4:45 p.m. on Monday, June 15, 2015 in the Great Hall of the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.  Awards will be given for public interest, public service, "Legends in Law," distinguished legal writing awards, outstanding journalist in law, and an award to Professor Marilyn Walter of Brooklyn Law School for "Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education."  Entertainment will be provided that evening by Kristin Chenoweth, the Emmy and Tony Award winning superstar.  It's a black tie event and tickets can be pricey, but the value of the evening makes it all worthwhile.

(mew)

Meet the LWI Professional Status Committee: Olympia Duhart

The Legal Writing Institute, the world's largest membership organization for persons concerned with legal writing and its teaching, has established a new Professional Status Committee to examine the national employment situation for professors who teach legal writing.  Read more about the committee by clicking here.  The new committee will serve as a resource for LWI members who are facing specific employment or professional development issues. The committee will also gather information about professional status issues and challenges that will help the LWI Board respond appropriately to various challenges and situations.

 

The seven members of the new Professional Status Committee are

• David W. Austin (California Western School of Law, San Diego)
• Mary Bowman, Co-Chair (Seattle University School of Law)
• Olympia Duhart (Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, Fort Lauderdale, Florida) 
• Lucy Jewel (University of Tennessee College of Law, Knoxville)
• Kristen Tiscione, Co-Chair (Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.)
• Melissa Weresh (Drake University Law School, Des Moines, Iowa)
• Cliff Zimmerman (Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois)

Each day this week we are profiling one of the seven members of the committee.

Olympia Duhart is Director of First-Year Lawyering Skills and Values Program at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She also teaches courses in constitutional law and Women & the Law.  She serves on the Board of Advisors for the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning and the Advisory Board for the LexisNexis Publications Advisory Board. 

 

In January 2014, Professor Duhart began her two-year term as co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). She serves with Professor Ruben Garcia of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Before joining the faculty at NSU, Professor Duhart was a founding member of the Critical Skills Program at Nova. Previously, she worked as an attorney in the litigation department at Ruden McClosky. She also spent several years doing pro bono work with the Florida Innocence Project. Before attending law school, Professor Duhart taught in the English department at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Professor Duhart also worked as a staff reporter for The Miami Herald, where she covered municipal government and schools. Her articles have appeared in national print and in online magazines. She continues to contribute to blogs, including the NAACP Defenders Online, the SALTLAW blog, and The Huffington Post. Maybe someday we'll get her to write something for the Legal Writing Prof Blog!

Professor Duhart’s scholarship focuses government accountability for historically marginalized groups of people. She has published extensively on Hurricane Katrina survivors. She has most recently written about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among veterans and members of the military. She also served as a member of the Editorial Board for Vulnerable Populations and Transformative Teaching: A Critical Reader. In addition, Professor Duhart has written in the areas of active learning, assessments, and teaching methods. She is the co-author (along with Thomas Baker, William Araiza and Steve Friedland) of Skills and Values: Constitutional Law.

Professor Duhart graduated magna cum laude from Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad Law Center, where she was a Goodwin Scholar. She earned her B.A. in English, cum laude, from the University of Miami. She has conducted presentations on teaching methods for law professors at conferences hosted by the Legal Writing Institute, the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, and the National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference, among others. In 2009 and 2012, Professor Duhart was recognized as NSU’s recipient for the Association of American Law Schools Award for Teaching. She was also named Professor of the Year by the NSU Student Bar Association in 2012. In 2014, she won the Stephanie Aleong Impact Award, which recognizes a faculty member who has had an impact on a law student who exemplifies compassion, industry and community service. In 2014, Professor Duhart was named to the Lawyers of Color's 50 Under 50 list, a comprehensive catalog of minority law professors making an impact in legal education.

Here is the statement that Olympia shared with the Legal Writing Listserve to introduce herself as a member of the new Professional Status Committee:

I knew I had hit the big time. Not only had I just landed my first job as a law professor, but I was hired to teach legal research and writing. To me, that meant that my years as a newspaper reporter paid off. Or that someone appreciated how hard I had worked as a high school English teacher to make American Literature research papers exciting for my students.  Or maybe someone really understood how much pride I took in my writing ability in practice. Whatever the reason, I felt incredibly lucky to be hired as a law professor. I felt especially lucky to be walking into the most prestigious post in the law school. (What was more important than teaching LRW??)  But I got a reality check at the new teacher’s conference in Washington, D.C. One of the teaching “experts” brought in to train us was having a nice conversation with me when she realized I was hired to teach LRW.  “Why are you doing that? We have to get you on a tenure-track line teaching a doctrinal class.”  I was stunned that there was such a negative perception about the status of legal writing professors.  Since then, I have worked both formally and informally to challenge and correct those perceptions. Throughout the years, several other well-meaning people have encouraged me to switch to a “better” post.  But I love what I do. Even if it means that I’m doing it on a long-term contract basis.  And I know this is the big time. Now to get everyone else on board.

(mew)

 

Cheryl Beckett Voted "Professor of the Year" at Gonzaga

Professor Cheryl A. Beckett, Director of the Legal Research and Writing Program at Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Washington, has just been voted Professor of the Year by the students at her school.  Congratulations Cheryl!

Fun facts about Cheryl?  Before she became a law professor she was a Field Attorney in Anchorage, Alaska for the National Labor Relations Board and was also Counsel for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1439.

Professor Beckett serves as a Commissioner and Vice-Chair on the City of Spokane Civil Service Commission, and continues to serve as arbitrator and mediator on both public and private labor issues when called upon by employers and unions. She is a member of the American Bar Association, Labor and Employment Law Section; the Washington State Bar Association, Labor and Employment Section; the Association of American Law Schools, Labor and Employment Law Section and Legal Research and Writing Section; and the Association of Legal Writing Directors.

Hat tip to  Mark DeForrest

(mew)

Meet the LWI Professional Status Committee: Mary Bowman

The Legal Writing Institute, the world's largest membership organization for persons concerned with legal writing and its teaching, has established a new Professional Status Committee to examine the national employment situation for professors who teach legal writing.  Read more about the committee by clicking here.  The new committee will serve as a resource for LWI members who are facing specific employment or professional development issues. The committee will also gather information about professional status issues and challenges that will help the LWI Board respond appropriately to various challenges and situations.

 

The seven members of the new Professional Status Committee are

• David W. Austin (California Western School of Law, San Diego)
• Mary Bowman, Co-Chair (Seattle University School of Law)
• Olympia Duhart (Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, Fort Lauderdale, Florida) 
• Lucy Jewel (University of Tennessee College of Law, Knoxville)
• Kristen Tiscione, Co-Chair (Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.)
• Melissa Weresh (Drake University Law School, Des Moines, Iowa)
• Cliff Zimmerman (Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois)

Each day this week we are profiling one of the seven members of the committee.

Committee Co-Chair Mary Bowman is an Associate Professor of Lawyering Skills and Associate Director of the Legal Writing Program at Seattle University School of Law in Seattle, Washington.

Professor Bowman is the chair of the Law-Review Award Committee for Scribes, the American Society of Legal Writers, which honors the best student-written law review article each year.  Additionally, she has served on various committees for both the Legal Writing Institute and the Association of American Law Schools' Section on Legal Writing, Research and Reasoning. She served as Co-Chair of the June 2014 national workshop, Bringing Outside In: Social Justice Collaborations in the Legal Writing Curriculum. 

Professor Bowman focuses her scholarship on criminal procedure and legal writing issues. Although the two areas are obviously distinct, they intersect in that they raise issues related to ethical advocacy and persuasion, as well as how cognitive science affects these issues.  Her most recent article, Full Disclosure: Cognitive Science, Informants, and Search Warrant Scrutiny is forthcoming in the Akron Law Review; that article builds on the work in her New Mexico Law Review article Truth or Consequences: Self-Incriminating Statements and Informant Veracity.  She is currently working on issues related to rethinking various doctrines related to prosecutorial misconduct at trial based on cognitive science.  She is also the author of Engaging First-Year Law Students through Pro Bono Collaborations, which was published in the spring 2013 issue of the Journal of Legal Education, and a co-author (with colleagues Sara Rankin and Lisa Brodoff) of We Have a Dream: Integrating Skills Courses and Public Interest Work in the First Year of Law School (and Beyond), forthcoming in the Chapman Law Review. 

Professor Bowman received her B.A. summa cum laude from Seattle University in 1995 and her J.D. in 1998 from Stanford Law School in 1998, where she was a member of the Order of the Coif. Before joining the law school's faculty, she clerked for a federal district court judge in Washington State and practiced environmental and employment law in Seattle. 

In the statement that Mary shared with the Legal Writing Listserve to introduce herself as a member of the new Professional Status Committee, Mary stated that although she always loved teaching, she sstruggled at times with contract renewals that felt like she had to reapply for my job as well as differential treatment in terms of title, salary, voting rights, and basic respect for the valuable work that we do as legal writing faculty.  She also said that she benefited significantly from the groundwork laid by colleagues over many years, and with their help and support, she led multiple pushes for the opportunity for legal writing faculty to apply for tenure, including a successful effort in 2011.  Over the last few years, she has consulted informally with legal writing faculty at many schools nationwide on a variety of status issues.

 

(mew)

 

 

 

Call for Presenters: Global Legal Skills Conference

The Global Legal Skills conference, in its 10th year, will be held in Chicago, the city of its origin. The Conference began in Chicago at The John Marshall Law School, where it was held three times. It has also traveled to Mexico (twice), to Costa Rica (twice), to Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., and most recently to the University of Verona Faculty of Law in Verona, Italy.

This year’s conference (GLS 10) will be held at The John Marshall Law School for the first two days and will be hosted at Northwestern University School of Law for its final day. The two schools are within walking distance and are also served by subway line

The first call for proposals for presentations has already closed and acceptance messages are going out to those who submitted.  This is the second call for presenters. Proposals should be for a 25-minute presentation (for one or two people) or an interactive group panel presentation (no more than four panelists) of 75-minutes (including audience participation).

The conference audience will include legal writing professionals, international and comparative law professors, clinical professors and others involved in skills education, law school administrators, law librarians, and ESL/EFL professors and scholars. Also attending will be faculty members teaching general law subjects with a transnational or international component. Attendees have also included judges, lawyers, court translators, and others involved in international and transnational law. Attendees come from around the world, and as many as 35 countries have been represented in past conferences.

Please submit a proposal on any aspect of Global Legal Skills, including experiential learning, distance education, comparative law, international law, course design and materials, teaching methods, and opportunities for teaching abroad and in the United States. However, because the conference focuses on legal skills for a global audience, please tailor your proposal accordingly.

The schedule for GLS 10 will allow for professional networking opportunities and development and also a chance to take in the many sites (and excellent restaurants!) Chicago has to offer. Chicago is served by two airports, O’Hare and Midway, making travel to the city easy. The timing of the conference (the week before Memorial Day weekend) is intended to allow you to spend extra time exploring Chicago and its environs at a time when the temperatures are moderate and the skies are clear.

This is a self-funded academic conference, and as in past years, presenters will be asked to pay the registration fee of $225.00. A small number of need-based scholarships will also be available, especially for participants from outside the United States. Additional tickets for family members and friends will also be available for the walking tour, law school reception, and Union League Club Gala Dinner. Chicago in the springtime is a great travel destination for families where they can enjoy Millennium Park, two world class zoos, and the amazing Museum Campus.

You may submit more than one proposal but because of high demand for speaking slots you will only be allowed to speak on one panel.

Please send program proposals to [email protected]. You can also send a copy to Lurene Contento (Program Chair of GLS 10). Her email is [email protected].

Please include “GLS 10 Proposal” in the subject line. Then, list the names and institutional affiliations of presenters, the title of your presentation, a brief summary of your presentation, the format you would prefer (25 minutes or 75 minutes), and the target audience.

You will find travel information and more conference information on the GLS website, glsc.jmls.edu/2015. Additional proposals will be accepted through April 15 if additional speaking slots are available.

Spanish Language CLE Proposals

You may also submit proposals for CLE presentations in Spanish. A Spanish-language CLE track will include sessions for attorneys, law students, and court translators. Persons submitting proposals for presentations in Spanish may also submit a proposal in English as an exception to the single presentation rule. Proposals are sought on topics such as “Introduction to Mexican Law,” “Understanding the Amparo,” and “Latin American Corporation Law.”

Scholars’ Forum (Tues. May 19, 2015)

A one-day scholars’ forum is also planned for May 19th, the day before the GLS conference begins. Participation in this forum will be limited to 16 persons and will include special sessions on international legal research as well as the presentation of papers and works-in-progress. For more information about the Scholars’ Forum, send an email to Prof. Mark E. Wojcik at [email protected] with the title of your proposed work. Registration for the scholars’ forum is at this link: http://events.jmls.edu/registration/node/677

We hope to see you in Chicago this May for the 10th anniversary of the Global Legal Skills Conference!

Thank you,

Prof. Mark E. Wojcik, Chair, Global Legal Skills Conference
Prof. Lurene Contento, Chair GLS 10 Program Committee, The John Marshall Law School

Meet the LWI Professional Status Committee: David Austin

The Legal Writing Institute, the world's largest membership organization for persons concerned with legal writing and its teaching, has established a new Professional Status Committee to examine the national employment situation for professors who teach legal writing.  Read more about the committee by clicking here.  The new committee will serve as a resource for LWI members who are facing specific employment or professional development issues. The committee will also gather information about professional status issues and challenges that will help the LWI Board respond appropriately to various challenges and situations.

 

The seven members of the new Professional Status Committee are:

• David W. Austin (California Western School of Law, San Diego)
• Mary Bowman, Co-Chair (Seattle University School of Law)
• Olympia Duhart (Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, Fort Lauderdale, Florida) 
• Lucy Jewel (University of Tennessee College of Law, Knoxville)
• Kristen Tiscione, Co-Chair (Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.)
• Melissa Weresh (Drake University Law School, Des Moines, Iowa)
• Cliff Zimmerman (Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois)

Each day this week we are profiling one of the seven members of the committee.

David W. Austin  is a Legal Writing Professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego, California.  He received his B.A. from the European Division of the University of Maryland and his J.D. from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago where he also later taught legal writing as an adjunct professor.  In addition to large firm private practice in Chicago, he served as a law clerk to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawai'i.

 

Before his career in the law, Mr. Austin worked for the Italian Ministry of Health and with non-governmental organization in Italy and other European countries. He was elected to the board of the European Council of AIDS Service Organizations and served as a representative for Southern Europe from 1991 to 1994. In 1996, he was a visiting Research Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.

 

David is married to a legal writing professor at another law school.

 

Here is the statement that David shared with the Legal Writing Listserve to introduce himself as a member of the new Professional Status Committee: 

I love teaching Legal Skills for many of the same reasons that made me love it as a student.  I love the smaller class size because it gives us an opportunity to know our students in ways that would be difficult in a large lecture class.  I love the satisfaction that comes from teaching students practical skills that they will remember and apply for the remainder of their professional careers, independent of the actual area of legal practice they enter.  I love that we are in the front lines of the debate regarding the direction legal education should be taking. 

 

What I don’t love is the fact that we remain exceedingly vulnerable in light of decreases in student applications, shrinking revenue, and the tenuous protections afforded under a system that, for most of us, is separate and unequal. I know that Legal Writing professors work very hard and that the current market will require us to work even harder:  more of our students are entering law school less prepared for the challenges that they will encounter there.  Many administrators and doctrinal colleagues will assume that the burden is on us, Legal Writing professors, to bring these students up to speed.  The additional burdens we will be asked to carry will not often be accompanied by offers of additional assistance or compensation.  We will be asked to do more for less. 

 

For those of us who lack the kind of job security that tenure provides, speaking out in favor of our students and for ourselves may often come at a cost.  At California Western School of Law, the Legal Writing professors start with a two-year contract that can be renewed for another two years.  We are then eligible for consideration for five-year, presumptively renewable contracts like the one that currently governs my employment.  We cannot vote on faculty hires, nor can we vote on the dean.  That means that, at the moment, we cannot directly influence outcomes that might lead to improved status within the institution.  These issues are currently being debated, but the outcomes remain uncertain. 

 

I’m glad that LWI is taking the initiative to create a new Committee that will focus on Professional Status.  With so much at stake, and with so few protections, we can all benefit from a platform that will help add volume to our many voices.

 

The Legal Writing Institute Launches a Professional Status Committee

The Legal Writing Institute, the world's largest membership organization devoted to legal writing and its teaching, has launched an LWI Professional Status Committee.

 

The professors serving on this new committee have a broad range of experience and represent the full range of legal writing programs across the country.

 

In announcing the committee, LWI President Linda Berger stated that the Committee will serve as a coordinating mechanism and a clearinghouse, with its primary first goals being (1) to serve as a resource for members who are facing specific employment or professional development issues and (2) to gather information about status issues and challenges that will help the LWI Board respond appropriately to various challenges and situations.

 

The seven members of the new Professional Status Committee are

• David W. Austin (California Western School of Law, San Diego)
• Mary Bowman, Co-Chair (Seattle University School of Law)
• Olympia Duhart (Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, Fort Lauderdale, Florida) 
• Lucy Jewel (University of Tennessee College of Law, Knoxville)
• Kristen Tiscione, Co-Chair (Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.)
• Melissa Weresh (Drake University Law School, Des Moines, Iowa)
• Cliff Zimmerman (Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois) 

You can meet each member of the Professional Status Committee in individual profiles that we will post daily over the coming week.

(mew)

 

A potpourri of tips about legal writing

For a potpourri of tips about legal writing, see Dear Scrivener by Scott Moise in the March 2015 South Carolina Lawyer. There, Moise responds to questions the column has received. Two of them concern pet peeves of mine:

--Is the colon in this sentence correct—“Enclosed are: a special warranty deed, a signed contract, ad an affidavit”? Moise’s answer is a resounding “No” (as is mine). A colon must follow language that could stand alone as a complete sentence.

--Should numbers be both spelled and expressed as numerals, as in “thirty (30)”?  Again the answer is “No.” That formulation is wordy and smacks of outdated legalese.

For more tips, see the rest of the column.

(jdf)

ALWD and the Bluebook

Well you just can't say enough about ALWD and the Bluebook it seems, particularly now that citations made from each are indistinguishable.  Your legal readers won't know which citation manual you used to get those oh-so-perfect citations.

Not everyone is happy about that development. Professor Peter W. Martin, the Jane M.G. Foster Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Cornell, shared this short review that laments the capitulation of ALWD to the Bluebook. 

(mew)

Call for Ideas: AALS Section on Teaching Methods

Here's the call for ideas, for the Section's 2015 newsletter:

The AALS Section on Teaching Methods is building its 2015 newsletter around your creativity and innovation for introducing practical skills and knowledge into first-year law school classrooms around the country. 

 

Our Goal - Our hope is to create a forum that inspires each of us to share our ideas, borrow those of others, and ultimately reinvigorate and improve our teaching and our students' learning.

 

Our Ask - Using the form available at ​http://goo.gl/forms/n8nGp4v3ob, please submit by April 15 a very brief summary (no more than 280 characters--or two tweets!) of an idea you have executed (or are thinking about executing) for teaching practical skills or knowledge in a first-year law school course (e.g., contracts, torts, property, criminal law, procedure, writing). 

 

By submitting an idea, you give the Section on Teaching Methods permission to reprint your submission, along with your submitted name and affiliation, in our 2015 newsletter.

 

Our Followup - The Section may reach out to the authors of a handful of submissions to write a brief article that provides more detail regarding the teaching idea submitted.

 

We look forward to sharing your creativity and energy!

 

(kem)

Law Student Essay Competition on Public Interest Law

The University of Pennsylvania Law Review announced a competition for student-authored submissions for its first annual public-interest essay competition.  The author of the first-prize paper will receive $3,000, and the winning article will be published in volume 164 of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Here's what you need to know about it.

COMPETITION DETAILS
TOPIC Submissions must focus on a specific legal issue within the public interest. This encompasses any issues relating to social justice or advancing the general welfare and good of the public. Topic selection will be one of the criteria judged. FORMAT Essays must be submitted in PDF format and include footnote citations. Submissions must be no longer than 9,000 words, including all footnotes, and be named "PIEC.pdf". All submissions will be considered anonymously. Students must ensure that their essays do not contain any identifying information. Any essays that include identifying information, such as name, class year, or institutional affiliation, will be disqualified. ELIGIBILITY The competition is open to all current law students (Classes of 2015, 2016, and 2017) from any ABA accredited American law school. Submissions are limited to one per person and must be an original, unpublished academic essay.		DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION The University of Pennsylvania Law Review is accepting submissions for its first annual Public Interest Essay Competition. The deadline for submissions is Monday, June 22, 2015, at 5pm EDT, via the online submission portal. JUDGING PROCESS AND WINNER NOTIFICATION All submissions will be considered anonymously by a selection committee from Volume 164 of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. The best submissions will demonstrate originality and superior literary effort that advances and serves the interests and understanding of a specific topic within the broad arena of public interest and the law. The winning essay will be announced in the fall of 2015, receive $3,000, and be published in print in Volume 164 of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. These guidelines and the link to the online submission portal are accessible through the Public Interest tab on the website of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

Hat tip to Eleanor Barrett, Associate Dean for Legal Practice Skills, University of Pennsylvania Law School

(mew)

Justice Blackmun's blood oath

Utah State political science professor Greg Goelzhauser recently reported in the Green Bag about a"blood oath" by Justice Harry Blackmun (pictured at left), who was known as a wordsmith and a grammarian. It seems that Blackman and Reporter of Decisions Henry Putzel agreed to root out the terms parameter and viable from Supreme Court opinions. Blackmun's objection to the first was that it is a mathematical term and not a synonym for boundary, and he saw viable as a medical term meaning "capable of living."  Thus he disliked the phrase "viable alternative."

In addition to its being incorrect in many contexts, I object to parameter as just plain stuffy. But I think viable can work metaphorically, as in "She has a viable claim."

If I took a blood oath it would be against the rampant incorrect use of "as such" and "begs the question." The first phrase includes a pronoun--such--that must have an antecedent, but there isn't one when the phrase is used to mean therefore. And begs the question refers to a specific logical fallacy, a kind of circular reasoning. It does not mean "raises the question."

(jdf)

Washburn Junior Legal Writing Scholars Workshop in July

Washburn University School of Law is proud to announce the second annual Washburn Junior Legal Writing Scholars Workshop, to be held on July 24-25, 2015.  This workshop will provide a unique collaborative environment in which to receive feedback from other legal writing professors on your scholarly projects. Participants will work in small groups to give suggestions, ask questions, and offer input on the papers presented.

The workshop organizers, Professors Emily Grant and Joseph Mastrosimone, strongly encourage scholarship submissions that are in any stage – idea outline, work-in-progress, or nearly complete and ready to submit.  The call is open to all junior legal writing professors (defined as anyone without tenure) whether they are full-time, part-time, or adjunct faculty and those who are seeking employment as a legal writing professor.

There is no registration fee for the workshop.  In addition, Washburn University School of Law will provide all meals during the workshop and hotel lodging for Friday night, July 24.  Such a deal!  The workshop will run from mid-afternoon Friday to mid-day Saturday to give participants sufficient time to travel Friday morning and Saturday evening, which should hopefully allow participants to attend the workshop without needing a second night’s hotel stay.

If you are interested in participating in the Washburn Junior Legal Writing Scholars Workshop, please let them know by April 17, 2015, by emailing Joseph Mastrosimone at Washburn.  In your email, please describe your scholarly work and estimate what form it will take by the end of July (outline, early stage work-in-progress, nearly complete draft, second edition?).  A maximum of eight papers will be selected to guarantee a workshop atmosphere. Those selected will be notified by May 15, and workshop submissions must be completed by July 13, 2015.

More information about the 2015 workshop and last year’s successful workshop can be found by clicking here.

Hat tip to Joseph Mastrosimone

(mew)

Legal Research is Like Looking for a Needle in a Needle Stack

The best place to hide something is sometimes in plain sight.  And while looking for a needle in a haystack may be difficult, it might be harder than finding the right needle in a stack of needles.  The phrase has been used in some popular culture (television shows) but I had not heard the phrase applied to legal research until I heard it from Ryan Allein, a first-year student at California Western School of Law.  Lamenting that electronic research had made it too easy to find cases, he said that legal research was like looking for a needle in a needle stack.

What's the remedy?  For many researchers, spending a few minutes with a secondary source that explains the area of law being researched will save hours of needless (and needle-less) research.  You'll have a better sense of what it is you're looking for and better know when you have found it.  And taking a second look at that secondary source after finding your killer case isn't a bad idea either. You may see additional issues or better understand the nuances of an argument you're going to make.

Mark E. Wojcik (mew)

A Reminder About the Dangers of Plagiarism

In 2014, the U.S. Army War College revoked the master's degree previously given to U.S. Senator John E. Walsh after investigating allegations that large amounts of his 14-page thesis had been plagiarized.  After the allegations of plagiarism became public last year, Senator Walsh of Montana dropped his campaign for election to the Senate. (He had been appointed to fill out the remainder of an unfinished term.)  See Jonathan Martin, Plagiarism Costs Degree for Senator John Walsh, N.Y. Times, Oct. 10, 2014; Academic Integrity: U.S. Army War College Revokes Senator's Degree Over Plagiarism, Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 24, 2014, at A18. And yes, we put citations in this post because we didn't want to be accused of plagiarism!

(mew0

The Scrivener is now available electronically

The Scrivener, the newsletter of Scribes, the American Society of Legal Writers, has gone electronic. That means it will be more readily available to readers of this blog.

The winter 2014 issue has lots of interesting information, including an article by Anthony Niedwiecki of The John Marshall Law School on the extensive changes to the latest (fifth) edition of the ALWD Citation Guide, and how it now produces the same citations as The Bluebook: "[The new edition of the ALWD Citation Guide] eliminates all style differences with The Bluebook, so The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation will be the only book on citation that law students and lawyers will ever have to buy."

This latest issue of The Scrivener also contains moving tributes to a long-time Scribes member, the late Beverly Burlingame, and the outgoing executive director of Scribes, Norm Plate.  In another article based on a presentation at the 2014 Annual Scribes Membership Meeting, Talmage Boston analyzes Abraham Lincoln as a communicator. And a photo shows my fellow blog editor Mark Wojcik receiving the Section Award from the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research (well deserved, Mark!) for his service to legal writing.

This issue of The Scrivener also contains a fitting tribute to Jane Siegel of Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, who diligently served for many years as the previous editor-in-chief of The Scrivener.  The article about her by Julie Spanbauer highlights the many contributions that Jane made over her years of service to Scribes and The Scrivener.

The new editorial team for The Scrivener is being led by Professor Maureen Collins of The John Marshall Law School in Chicago.  She welcomes contributions of articles and news items for the next issue of The Scrivener.

Click here for more information about Scribes--The American Society of Legal Writers.

(jdf)

Warren Burger's thoughts about preparing legal advocates

Some thoughts by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger about preparing legal advocates were recently republished in the Fordham Law Review.  The piece originally appeared in 1973 and was based on a speech Burger gave at Fordham. After lamenting the quality of advocacy in U.S courts, the Burger praised the work of English advocates, who go through a selection process. Burger then criticized law schools for not providing “adequate and systematic programs” to teach advocacy. That, of course, has changed since 1973, as professors of legal writing and advocacy have become increasingly professionalized.  Still, Burger’s proposals might pique some interest today. He argued that our profession should “face up to and reject” the idea that every law graduate is qualified to argue before the Courts. Instead, we should evaluate lawyers’ competence and require certification of courtroom advocates. The article is titled The Special Skills of Advocacy: Are Specialized Training and Certification of Advocates Essential to Our System of Justice?

(jdf)

The Trouble with Categories

Those of you who have read Linda Edwards' new article, "The Trouble with Categories: What Theory Can Teach Us about the Doctrine-Skills Divide," may also want to check out these posts at PrawfsBlawg, in which Eric Carpenter discusses her proposed alternative categories.

(kem)

The most sarcastic Justice

As U.C. Irvine’s Professor Richard Hasen demonstrates in a recent Green Bag piece, Justice Antonin Scalia is by far the most sarcastic U.S. Supreme Court justice.  Between 1986 and 2013, commentators have referred to his opinions as “sarcastic” or “caustic” seventy-five times. The nearest contender was Justice Stevens, who was so labeled a mere nine times. Even when years on the court are corrected for, Scalia stand out as the most sarcastic. Hasen notes that most of the sarcasm is directed against colleagues on the court and appears in dissenting opinions.

What does Hasen make of this?  Justice Scalia has said he writes his dissents for law students, and Hasen says his students do indeed prefer Scalia’s breezy style. But Hasen also notes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s concern that Scalia's sarcasm may be teaching law students to “act uncivilly in formal legal settings.”

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Call for Presenters: Global Legal Skills Conference

The Global Legal Skills conference, in its 10th year, will be held in Chicago, the city of its origin. The Conference began in Chicago at The John Marshall Law School, where it was held three times. It has also traveled to Mexico (twice), to Costa Rica (twice), to Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., and most recently to the University of Verona Faculty of Law in Verona, Italy.

This year’s conference (GLS 10) will be held at The John Marshall Law School for the first two days and will be hosted at Northwestern University School of Law for its final day. The two schools are within walking distance and are also served by subway line

The first call for proposals for presentations has already closed and acceptance messages are going out to those who submitted.  This is the second call for presenters. Proposals should be for a 25-minute presentation (for one or two people) or an interactive group panel presentation (no more than four panelists) of 75-minutes (including audience participation).

The conference audience will include legal writing professionals, international and comparative law professors, clinical professors and others involved in skills education, law school administrators, law librarians, and ESL/EFL professors and scholars. Also attending will be faculty members teaching general law subjects with a transnational or international component. Attendees have also included judges, lawyers, court translators, and others involved in international and transnational law. Attendees come from around the world, and as many as 35 countries have been represented in past conferences.

Please submit a proposal on any aspect of Global Legal Skills, including experiential learning, distance education, comparative law, international law, course design and materials, teaching methods, and opportunities for teaching abroad and in the United States. However, because the conference focuses on legal skills for a global audience, please tailor your proposal accordingly.

The schedule for GLS 10 will allow for professional networking opportunities and development and also a chance to take in the many sites (and excellent restaurants!) Chicago has to offer. Chicago is served by two airports, O’Hare and Midway, making travel to the city easy. The timing of the conference (the week before Memorial Day weekend) is intended to allow you to spend extra time exploring Chicago and its environs at a time when the temperatures are moderate and the skies are clear.

This is a self-funded academic conference, and as in past years, presenters will be asked to pay the registration fee of $225.00. A small number of need-based scholarships will also be available, especially for participants from outside the United States. Additional tickets for family members and friends will also be available for the walking tour, law school reception, and Union League Club Gala Dinner. Chicago in the springtime is a great travel destination for families where they can enjoy Millennium Park, two world class zoos, and the amazing Museum Campus.

You may submit more than one proposal but because of high demand for speaking slots you will only be allowed to speak on one panel.

Please send program proposals to [email protected]. You can also send a copy to Lurene Contento (Program Chair of GLS 10). Her email is [email protected].

Please include “GLS 10 Proposal” in the subject line. Then, list the names and institutional affiliations of presenters, the title of your presentation, a brief summary of your presentation, the format you would prefer (25 minutes or 75 minutes), and the target audience.

You will find travel information and more conference information on the GLS website, glsc.jmls.edu/2015. Additional proposals will be accepted through April 15 if additional speaking slots are available.

Spanish Language CLE Proposals

You may also submit proposals for CLE presentations in Spanish. A Spanish-language CLE track will include sessions for attorneys, law students, and court translators. Persons submitting proposals for presentations in Spanish may also submit a proposal in English as an exception to the single presentation rule. Proposals are sought on topics such as “Introduction to Mexican Law,” “Understanding the Amparo,” and “Latin American Corporation Law.”

Scholars’ Forum (Tues. May 19, 2015)

A one-day scholars’ forum is also planned for May 19th, the day before the GLS conference begins. Participation in this forum will be limited to 16 persons and will include special sessions on international legal research as well as the presentation of papers and works-in-progress. For more information about the Scholars’ Forum, send an email to Prof. Mark E. Wojcik at [email protected] with the title of your proposed work. Registration for the scholars’ forum is at this link: http://events.jmls.edu/registration/node/677

We hope to see you in Chicago this May for the 10th anniversary of the Global Legal Skills Conference!

Thank you,

Prof. Mark E. Wojcik, Chair, Global Legal Skills Conference
Prof. Lurene Contento, Chair GLS 10 Program Committee, The John Marshall Law School