Legal Writing Prof Blog

Applied Legal Storytelling Conference

Here's a reminder that registration is now open for the 6th Biennial Applied Legal Storytelling Conference, which will be held this year from July 11-13, 2017 in Washington, D.C at the American University Washington College of Law.

Register by clicking on the link - Applied Legal Storytelling Conference.  The website has information on hotels and dorms, as well as program information. The Gala Reception will be held at the Lincoln Cottage, Abraham Lincoln's home in Washington, D.C. and the "Cradle of the Emancipation Proclamation."

Hat tip to Jason Palmer.

(mew) 

Registration for the 2017 ALWD Conference

The 2017 Association of Legal Writing Directors ("ALWD") Conference Committee invites you to the 2017 conference, Acknowledging Lines: Talking About What Unites and Divides Us.  Speaker details, and a link to the registration page, are available on the conference website: http://alwd.umn.edu/.  The ALWD Conference will be held at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from July 19-21, 2017.

 

Hat tip to the 2017 ALWD Conference Committee: Amy Vorenberg, Anne Mullins, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff, Alyssa Dragnich, Chris Soper, Brad Clary, Anne Ralph, David Krech, Rosi Lozada Schrier, Joe Mastrosimone, Shakira Pleasant, Tanya Bartholomew, Sam Moppett, Norm Plate, Mary Garvey Algero, Greg Johnson, Scott Farley, Christine Coughlin, and Michelle Falkoff.

 

(mew)

Reminder: Deadline Extended for Presentations at the ALWD Innovative Teaching Workshop

The Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) will hold an Innovative Teaching Workshop on Wednesday, July 19, 2017 in connection with the 2017 ALWD Conference at the University of Minnesota School of Law. Here's a reminder that the deadline for presentation proposals has been extended to June 1, 2017.

The workshop will be held on July 19th from 9:00 am to 1:30 p.m. The informal, pre-conference workshop is designed to provide legal writing faculty an opportunity to highlight, share, and further develop their creative teaching ideas and techniques. Participants will be divided into small groups led by experienced legal writing professors. We welcome proposals for teaching ideas/techniques related to the conference theme of Acknowledging Lines: Talking About What Unites and Divides Us, as well as proposals relating to innovative teaching ideas more generally.

There is no fee for the workshop, but participants will apply for the workshop by submitting a description of no more than 300 words of the teaching idea/technique they would like to present, including any brainstorming prompts/questions they might like to focus on during the session, as well as their contact information. Enrollment is limited to sixteen people first-come, first served. Participants will be notified by return email of acceptance into the workshop.

Please email your proposal to: Kirsten Dauphinais at [email protected]. The deadline is rolling with a new closing date of June 1, 2017. After the conference, workshop participants will be asked to write up a one-page synopsis of their workshopped idea to serve as a takeaway resource for other participants. And hey, if anyone wants to post their idea here on the Legal Writing Prof Blog we're happy to accommodate you!

If you have questions the conference, please email Kirsten Dauphinais at [email protected].

Hat tips to the ALWD Innovative Teaching Workshop Committee: Kirsten Dauphinais (Chair), and committee members Olympia Duhart, Emily Grant, Laura Graham, Tamara Herrera, and Katherine Kelly.

(mew)

Congratulations to the Winners of the 2017 Burton Awards; Linda Edwards to Receive the 2017 Burton Award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education

Congratulations to the winners of the 2017 Burton Awards, which will be presented in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress on Monday, May 22, 2017.

Each year since its inception eighteen years ago, the Burton national awards program has grown in stature. The non-profit program is held in association with the Library of Congress, presented by lead sponsor Law360 and, co-sponsored by the American Bar Association through its Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress. Patterned after the Pulitzer Prizes, its close relationship with the Library of Congress has helped it flourish. Read more about The Burton Awards.

The Burton Awards is quite simply the most glamorous night of the year for legal writing. Held at the Library of Congress, the guest speakers and award winners have included U.S. Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and Justice John Paul Stevens [retired].

Among the many awards being presented on Monday is the Burton Award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education. The winner of the 2017 award is Professor Linda Edwards of the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law.

Before joining the academy, Professor Edwards practiced law for eleven years. She then began her teaching career at the New York University School of Law, where she served as the Coordinator of the NYU Lawyering Program. In 1990, Professor Edwards joined the faculty at the Mercer University School of Law, where she was the Macon Professor of Law. During her 19 years at Mercer, Professor Edwards directed the legal writing program and taught in the areas of property, employment discrimination, advanced legal writing, professional responsibility, and legal reasoning.

Here is a comprehensive list of winners of the Burton Award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education.

• 2017: Linda Edwards, Professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law
• 2016: Louis J. Sirico, Jr., Professor at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
• 2015: Marilyn Walter, Professor and Director of the Legal Writing Program at Brooklyn Law School
• 2014: Anne M. Enquist, Professor of Lawyering Skills and Director of the Legal Writing Program at Seattle University School of Law
• 2013: Mary Lawrence, Professor Emerita at University of Oregon School of Law
• 2012: Tina L. Stark, Professor of the Practice of Law and Director of the Transactional Program at Boston University School of Law.
• 2011: Marjorie Dick Rombauer, Professor Emerita of Law at University of Washington
• 2010: Helene S. Shapo, Professor of Law Emeritus at Northwestern University Law School
• 2009: Richard K. Neumann Jr., Professor at Hofstra University School of Law
• 2008: Mary Beth Beazley, Associate Professor of Law and Director of Legal Writing at Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law
• 2007: Laurel Oates, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law
• 2006: Ralph Brill, Served as Associate Dean, Acting Dean and Associate Dean of Student Affairs at the Chicago-Kent College of Law
• 2005: Darby Dickerson, Vice President and Dean at Stetson University College of Law [now Dean at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago]
• 2004: Kent D. Syverund, Dean and Garner Anthony Professor at Vanderbilt University Law School

William C. Burton, for whom the awards are named, is a partner in Sagat|Burton LLP., New York. He is the founder and Chairman of the Burton Awards Program. His practice is devoted to lobbying at the federal and state levels of government. He has served as a New York State Assistant Attorney General and an Assistant New York State Special Prosecutor. For fifteen years, he was Director of Government Affairs and handled legislative and regulatory matters for Continental Insurance, one of America's largest insurance companies. He is the author of BURTON'S LEGAL THESAURUS, the first and only such book ever written for the legal profession. The book is now in its fourth edition. When it was published Mr. Burton was given an award by the Association of American Publishers for the book's uniqueness and creativity.

In 1999, Mr. Burton created the Burton Foundation and the Burton Awards program to encourage perfection and reward excellence in the legal profession. The nonprofit Burton Awards program is run in association with the Library of Congress.

In 2011, Mr. Burton was awarded the highest award by the Legal Writing Institute, the second largest organization of law professors in the United States. The honor and tribute was given for his advocacy and impact on legal writing. Later in 2011, he was presented the "Blackstone Award" by the Friends of the Law Library of Congress for embodying and promoting the best ideals of the venerable institution.

(mew)

Registration Open for the Applied Legal Storytelling Conference

Here's a reminder that registration is open for the 6th Biennial Applied Legal Storytelling Conference, which will be held this year from July 11-13, 2017 in Washington, D.C at the American University Washington College of Law.

Register by clicking on the link - Applied Legal Storytelling Conference.  The website has information on hotels and dorms. The program for the conference will there too if it isn't already.

The Gala Reception will be held at the Lincoln Cottage, Abraham Lincoln's home in Washington, D.C. and the "Cradle of the Emancipation Proclamation."

Hat tip to Jason Palmer.

(mew) 

Save the Date: December 2018 Global Legal Skills Conference in Melbourne, Australia

It's 18 months away, so you can block out the days on your calendar and start saving your frequent flier miles for a trip to Australia for the next Global Legal Skills Conference.

The 13th Global Legal Skills Conference will be held at Melbourne Law School from December 10-12, 2018.

The Conference will be co-sponsored by The John Marshall Law School of Chicago (where the conference series was founded). The Conference Co-Chairs will be Chantal Morton (Director of the Legal Academic Skills Centre and Director of Teaching at Melbourne Law School) and Mark E. Wojcik (Professor at The John Marshall Law School and founder of the Global Legal Skills Conference Series).

Previous Global Legal Skills Conferences have been held in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Costa Rica, Mexico, and, most recently, Italy. The conference is the leading global conference dedicated to legal skills education, and participants come from around the world to attend the conference. Participants include law professors, professors of English as Second Language, lawyers, judges, court interpreters, law students, language students, and other academics.

The GLS-13 Conference is being presented in cooperation with a number of international organizations, including these organizations already confirmed:

• Scribes--The American Society of Legal Writers
• The Teaching International Law Interest Group of the American Branch of the International Law Association

We acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Owners of the lands upon which the Melbourne Law School is situated.

(mew)

Marjorie Rombauer, the Mother of Legal Writing Education, Would Have Been 90 Years Old Today

Professor Emeritus Marjorie Rombauer of the University of Washington School of Law, an icon in the field of legal research and writing education who has been described as the "Founding Mother" of Legal Writing Education, would have been 90 years old today if she were still alive.

Click here to see our tribute to Marjorie Rombauer, including some video of her remarks in 2011 made when accepting the Burton Award for Excellence in Legal Writing Education.

Hat tip to Karin Mika.

(mew)

AALS Section on Teaching Methods Newsletter

The Association of American Law Schools Section on Teaching Methods promotes the communication of ideas, interests and activities among members of the section and makes recommendations on matters concerning techniques, strategies and methods of teaching, testing and grading law students.

Section Chair Debbie Borman has shared a link to the first in a series of its new and innovative Section Newsletters, created and produced by that Section's Teaching Methods Communications Committee: Michael Bloom, Ted Afield, and Dustin Benham (a Contributing Editor to the Legal Writing Prof Blog). It's well worth a quick look.

Hat tip to Debbie Borman

(mew)

Anthony Niedwiecki to be Next Dean at Golden Gate University School of Law

Anthony Niedwiecki, a former President of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) and former Director of the Lawyering Skills Program at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, will be the next dean at Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco.

Niedwiecki had joined the faculty of The John Marshall Law School in 2010 as an associate professor. He was the Director of the Lawyering Skills Program and also taught Employment Discrimination and a Sexual Orientation Law Seminar. In 2015, he was named as the school's Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, in which he oversaw John Marshall's curriculum, accreditation process, bar preparation program, distance education, and experiential learning program.

Niedwiecki received a bachelor's degree from Wayne State University, a J.D. from Tulane University Law School, and an LL.M. from Temple University Beasley School of Law. Before teaching, he was a commercial litigation attorney at Mayer Brown's Houston office and a labor and employment attorney with Gardere & Wynne in Dallas. He also taught at Arizona State University and returned to Temple before joining the faculty at Nova Southeastern University's Shepard Broad Law Center in 2003, where he was an associate professor and director of the Lawyering Skills and Values program before coming to The John Marshall Law School. 

(mew)

Mary Beth Beazley Wins the 2017 Rombauer Award

The Board of Directors of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) has announced that Mary Beth Beazley is the recipient of the 2017 Marjorie Rombauer Award.  This prestigious award has only been given twice since it was established.  First to Mary Lawrence in 2000 and then to Laurel Currie Oates in 2009.

The award recognizes a person who has contributed significantly to the field of legal writing:

• by education about the importance of legal writing;
• by published scholarship that advances the teaching of legal writing and the understanding of its underlying principles;
• by contributions to national legal writing organizations;
• by contributions to individual legal writing programs; and
• by efforts to improve the status of legal writing faculty.

As Mary Beth’s nominees wrote: “Professor Beazley is a force in the legal writing field.  For 30 years, she has served the national legal writing field with a generous heart and seemingly endless energy.”  Mary Beth uses humor and creativity to teach us all.  On top of that, she is “a prolific, versatile writer, and her work seamlessly integrates the doctrine of legal writing intro a wide range of topics.  Her scholarship ranges from the substance at the core of our discipline as legal writing faculty, to metacognitive pieces, to the interdisciplinary, combining the social perspective on writing with election law in her article on ballot design.” She has long been a national force in the field of legal writing.

The ALWD Awards Committee Members were Suzanne Rowe, Mary Algero, Todd Bruno, and Terry Pollman. The 2017 Marjorie Rombauer Award will be presented to Mary Beth Beazley at the ALWD Conference in Minneapolis.

Hat tip to Wanda M. Temm (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law).

(mew)

From History to Mystery: A Free Symposium on How to Craft a True Story into a Compelling Tale

Blog readers in Chicago have an opportunity to attend a free program put together by Debbie Borman. It's called From History to Mystery: Crafting a True Story into a Compelling Tale, a two-day colloquium in Evanston, Illinois. The event taps into the renewed interest in true-crime narrative and explores how to shape true stories into accurate but compelling narratives (something of great interest to the legal writer, of course!).

• The event starts on Thursday, May 25 with a lecture by bestselling author Daniel Stashower, tracing the “non-fiction novel” genre from Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood to such recent bestsellers as Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, and exploring the fiction techniques that help writers in this genre craft stories that both engage readers and can withstand rigorous fact-checking.
• A workshop the afternoon of Friday, May 26 features an interactive “CSI: Evanston” activity that will challenge participants to outline a true-crime narrative.
• The colloquium ends that Friday evening with a brief storytelling session on the life of a notable mystery author and a dramatic, interpretive reading of that author’s work.

The event is free to attend, and you can register for any or all of the events on the Eventbrite page at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/from-history-to-mystery-crafting-a-true-story-into-a-compelling-tale-tickets-32944774708. The event is financed by a grant from the Alumnae of Northwestern University.

 

Hat tips to Debbie Borman and Susie Salmon.

(mew)

 

Teresa Godwin Phelps Scholarship Award

The Teresa Godwin Phelps Scholarship Award honors individual works of outstanding scholarship specific to the legal writing discipline that are published in any given calendar year. The award is meant to set aspirational standards for others writing in the field.

In making an award, the selection committee and the Legal Writing Institute Board of Directors will focus solely on whether an individual work is specific to the discipline of legal writing and on whether it makes an outstanding contribution to the discipline. Neither the selection committee nor the Board will take into account long-term contributions to the field or contributions in service, program design, teaching, or improving status for the legal writing field.

The selection committee may recommend and the LWI Board may give more than one award for any given year.

Eligible works

Published articles and books are eligible for the award. To be eligible for an award made for any given calendar year, the work must be nominated for the award, and the work must have been published in its final form in that calendar year.

Anyone, except a member of the selection committee in that year or author of the nominated work, may nominate a work for consideration by the selection committee. Nominations must be in writing, briefly summarize the reasons for the nomination, include a copy of or link to the work, and must be received by the deadline for nominations.  Nomination deadlines and contact information for that year’s selection committee will be posted on the Legal Writing Institute website.

The publication date assigned by the publisher determines eligibility regardless of whether the work is actually available on that date. If the final form of the work is not actually available to the public in the year of its official publication date with the result that a nomination is untimely or the selection committee lacks time to consider the work before making award(s) for that year, the selection committee may evaluate the work and recommend an award for the subsequent year even though its official publication date was in the previous year.

Eligible authors

Any person, except a member of the selection committee in a given award year, is eligible to win the award.  The author’s faculty status, level of experience, and areas of teaching will not be taken into account.

Annual Nomination Deadline and Process

For works published in 2016, the nomination deadline is June 30, 2017.  The LWI Board plans to announce the Award winner or winners by September 30, 2017.

Send nominations to Kate George, administrative assistant to Ian Gallacher, the secretary of the 2016 selection committee, at [email protected].

Nominations must be in writing, briefly summarize the reasons for the nomination, provide a copy of or link to the nominated work, and must be received by the deadline for nominations.  The committee will not accept nominations by the author of the nominated work or by any member of the committee in that year.

Questions:  Please contact Kate O’Neill, Chair of the 2016 selection committee, at [email protected].

Hat tip to Ian Gallacher.

(mew)

Registration Open for the Applied Legal Storytelling Conference

Registration is open for the 6th Biennial Applied Legal Storytelling Conference, which will be held this year from July 11-13, 2017 in Washington, D.C at the American University Washington College of Law.

Register by clicking on the link - Applied Legal Storytelling Conference.  The website has information on hotels and dorms. The program for the conference will there too if it isn't already.

The Gala Reception will be held at the Lincoln Cottage, Abraham Lincoln's home in Washington, D.C. and the "Cradle of the Emancipation Proclamation."

Hat tip to Jason Palmer.

(mew) 

Winners Announced for the 2017 LWI/ALWD/LexisNexis Scholarship Grants; A Total of $20,000 in Grants Awarded

The Legal Writing Institute and the Association of Legal Writing Directors have announced the winners of the 2017 LWI/ALWD/LexisNexis Scholarship Grants. In a blind review process, a joint committee of LWI and ALWD evaluated the proposals and made funding recommendations, which both Boards affirmed.  This year, LWI and ALWD each contributed $7500.  LexisNexis contributed $5000.  Through their generosity of these organizations, four grants awards of $5000 each were made.

 

The grant winners and titles of the proposals are:

• Mark Cooney (Western Michigan, Cooley Law School), What Courts Cite
• Lindsay Head (LSU), A Contract to Hire: Unilateral Grading Contracts in the Legal Writing Classroom
• Nancy Millar (Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School), The Science of Successful Teaching
• Amanda Smith (Widener University, Commonwealth Law School), “Say What?”: A How-To Guide on Providing Formative Assessment to Law Students Through Live Critique

Members of the Joint Scholarship Grants Committee who mentored the applicants and evaluated the proposals were: Sue Chesler, David Cleveland, Lyn Entrikin, Elizabeth Frost, Jane Grise, Anne Mullins, Rebecca Scharf, and Emily Zimmerman.

Hat tips to Louis Sirico (LWI) and Greg Johnson (ALWD), Co-Chairs of the Joint Scholarship Grants Committee.

(mew)

 

 

 

Legal Writing Faculty

The University of Massachusetts School of Law in North Dartmouth announced that Julie Baker and Michael Murry have joined the faculty at UMass Law.

Julie Baker has been visiting at UMass Law this year after spending 14 years teaching at Suffolk University. In addition to Legal Research and Writing, she has taught Negotiation, Transactional Drafting, Moot Court, and Juvenile Defense. Before she became a professor, Julie worked as a litigation associate at Rubin and Rudman LLP in Boston and as a public defender at the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston. She also clerked in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She received her B.S. from MIT and her J.D. from Boston College Law School.

Michael Murray is currently teaching at the University of Kentucky, and previously taught at the University of Michigan, Valparaiso University, the University of San Diego, University of Illinois, and Saint Louis University. In addition to Legal Research and Writing, he has taught Art Law, Civil Procedure, Employment Law, First Amendment and Censorship, Professional Responsibility, and Remedies. Prior to teaching, Mike practiced intellectual property, corporate and commercial, and products liability litigation at Bryan Cave in St. Louis, and clerked in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. He earned his B.A. from Loyola College and his J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Hat tip to Shaun B. Spencer, and congratulations to Julie and Michael.

(mew)

 

Cleveland-Marshall Announces New Dean

The Cleveland State Univeristy Board of Trustees announced that the next dean of the Cleveland State University Cleveland-Marshall School of Law will be the current interim dean, former Ohio Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher.  Dean Fisher is described as a Clevelander who has dedicated his life to public service and social justice, and that he is coming to the law school with the intent of collaboratively running an institution dedicated to preparing its students to make this world a better place.

Congratulations, Cleveland-Marshall and Dean Fisher.

Hat tip to km

(mew)

Deadline Extended for Presentations at the ALWD Innovative Teaching Workshop

The Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) will hold an Innovative Teaching Workshop on Wednesday, July 19, 2017 in connection with the 2017 ALWD Conference at the University of Minnesota School of Law. The deadline for presentation proposals has been extended to June 1, 2017.

The workshop will be held from 9:00 am to 1:30 p.m. The informal, pre-conference workshop is designed to provide legal writing faculty an opportunity to highlight, share, and further develop their creative teaching ideas and techniques. Participants will be divided into small groups led by experienced legal writing professors. We welcome proposals for teaching ideas/techniques related to the conference theme of Acknowledging Lines: Talking About What Unites and Divides Us, as well as proposals relating to innovative teaching ideas more generally.

There is no fee for the workshop, but participants will apply for the workshop by submitting a description of no more than 300 words of the teaching idea/technique they would like to present, including any brainstorming prompts/questions they might like to focus on during the session, as well as their contact information. Enrollment is limited to sixteen people first-come, first served. Participants will be notified by return email of acceptance into the workshop.

Please email your proposal to: Kirsten Dauphinais at [email protected]. The deadline is rolling with a new closing date of June 1, 2017. After the conference, workshop participants will be asked to write up a one-page synopsis of their workshopped idea to serve as a takeaway resource for other participants. And hey, if anyone wants to post their idea here on the Legal Writing Prof Blog we're happy to accommodate you!

If you have questions the conference, please email Kirsten Dauphinais at [email protected].

Hat tips to the ALWD Innovative Teaching Workshop Committee: Kirsten Dauphinais (Chair), and committee members Olympia Duhart, Emily Grant, Laura Graham, Tamara Herrera, and Katherine Kelly.

(mew)

Moot Court Conference at The John Marshall Law School a Great Success

The Legal Writing Listserve has been sharing messages about success of the Second Biennial Legal Writing Institute Moot Court Advisors Conference held last weekend in the "lovely facilities" at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Professors Ardath Hamann (The John Marshall Law School) and Robert T. Sherwin (Texas Tech University School of Law) were the co-chairs of the LWI Moot Court Committee and, as one attendee wrote, they put together a "valuable conference full of energizing conversations, gatherings with others who do what we do, and opportunities to learn from each other."

 

It was said to be a perfect conference except for the fact that the Cubs weren’t in town (but if they were then some attendees might have been persuaded to skip a session or two).

 

Congratulations to the organizers and participants.

 

(mew)

Christine Nero Coughlin Wins the 2017 Mary S. Lawrence Award

The Board of Directors of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) announced that Christine Nero Coughlin is the recipient of the 2017 Mary S. Lawrence Award.

Professor Coughlin is the director of the Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research Program at Wake Forest University (WFU) School of Law. She also has appointments in the WFU Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she is a core faculty member of the Wake Forest Center for Bioethics, Health & Society, as well as the WFU School of Medicine’s Translational Science Institute.

The award will be presented during the 2017 Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) Biennial Conference in Minneapolis, Minneso ta in July 2017. The Mary S. Lawrence Award recognizes an individual for a combination of pioneering scholarship and innovative curriculum or program design. The award is named for Professor Emerita Mary S. Lawrence, longtime Director of the Legal Writing and Research Program at the University of Oregon School of Law and an early Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section (AALS) on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research. For her scholarship and her pioneering work in legal writing education, Mary received the first Distinguished Service Award from the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research; the inaugural Marjorie Rombauer Award from the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD); a joint LWI/ALWD Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Burton Award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education.

The LWI Awards Committee recommended Professor Coughlin for the 2017 Mary S. Lawrence Award to recognize her impactful scholarship, especially her lead authorship of the first-year legal writing text A Lawyer Writes; her curricular innovations at Wake Forest, especially those springing from her cross-appointments with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine; and her influence in our field as a mentor. A press release issued by the Legal Writing Institute stated that Professor Coughlin’s nominator had said that one of her “most unique contributions” was in “fostering dialogue between legal writing teachers and ‘doctrinal’ teachers. Chris believes that legal writing underlies every other legal discipline and that all scholarship is ‘legal writing scholarship.’”

The LWI Awards Committee includes Co-Chairs Myra Orlen and Kirsten Dauphinais, and members Brenda Gibson, Margaret Hannon, Greg Johnson, Mary Nagel, and Suzanne Rowe.

(mew)

Writers' Workshop in Washington, D.C.

THE LEGAL WRITING INSTITUTE WRITERS WORKSHOP

The Legal Writing Institute announced an extension of the deadline to apply for the fourteenth Legal Writing Institute Writers Workshop. The workshop will  take place on Friday, July 14 through Monday, July 17, 2017 and it will give up to twelve Legal Writing faculty the opportunity to spend time working on their academic writing projects and improving their scholarly skills.

The Workshop will take place at a Victorian Mansion in the 16^th Street Heights area of Northwest Washington DC; depending on demand, there may also be a few rooms in a nearby bed and breakfast or hotel.  The Workshop will take place immediately after the Applied Legal Storytelling Conference.

Who Can Attend?

All members of the Legal Writing Institute are eligible. You must have a scholarly writing project well underway and beyond the initial stages of performing early research and drafting a tentative outline. You must at least have some sort of partial draft. To be clear, we expect you to arrive with a substantial work product. In most cases, a scholarly writing project should result in a law review article or something similar.

Although all LWI members are encouraged to apply, the workshop is limited to 12 participants. We give priority to full-time Legal Writing faculty for whom scholarly writing is a prerequisite for retention, promotion, or tenure. Priority goes to applicants who have not attended past Workshops.

What Will You Do at the Workshop?

Participants make presentations on their projects to small groups of three and receive feedback. Each session runs about ninety minutes. They also take part in several guided discussion groups, each on a different topic. Participants will also have time to work on their drafts.

Will There Be Facilitators?

 Yes, experienced scholarly writers: Christine Coughlin, Deborah Gordon, and Louis Sirico

 Where Will the Workshop Be?

The workshop will take place at a large Victorian mansion (an AirBnB property), a great location for thought and productivity.  We will have exclusive access to the whole mansion

Who Pays?

Participants will pay a $300 registration. LWI will cover all meals, beginning with lunch on July 14 and ending with breakfast on July 17.

Questions?

Contact Kim Holst at [email protected] or (480) 965-1144.

How to Apply

Please fill out the application found here (or at forms.law.asu.edu/LWIWW2017) by noon, Wednesday, May 10.

Hat tip to the Writers Workshop Governing Board: Cynthia Adams, Ken Chestek, Deborah Gordon, Kim Holst, Chris Rideout, and Lou Sirico

(mew)