Legal Writing Prof Blog

Reminder: Apply to be an Editor of The Second Draft

Do you enjoy meeting new legal writing colleagues and working with them on their scholarship? Do you want to give back to the legal writing community in a meaningful way? If so, consider becoming an editor of The Second Draft.  

The Second Draft is an online publication of the Legal Writing Institute. It currently seeks three new board members to serve on the Editorial Board for terms lasting two to four years. Among other duties, Board members select the theme for the issue, draft a call for papers to solicit submissions, select articles from the pool of submissions, and work with authors and a graphic designer to edit those selections and produce the final issue. The Second Draft publishes one issue in the spring and one in the fall. Members of the Fall Board are busiest between April and September, while members of the Spring Board are busiest between October and March. The Board seeks strong applicants who: (1) possess exceptional editing skills and attention to detail; (2) enjoy working with authors and providing constructive critiques of accepted articles; (3) are proactive in volunteering for tasks and sharing responsibilities; (4) have a strong work ethic and will consistently manage time wisely, meet deadlines, and make meaningful contributions to the publication;  (5) think creatively, and (6) will be dedicated to producing a polished and professional final product.

To apply for a position on The Second Draft editorial board, please submit a resume and a statement of interest (one page maximum) to [email protected] by September 1, 2017.

The Second Draft Editorial Board

Submissions for the 2018 Scribes Brief-Writing Award

Here's a reminder that the submission deadline is September 1, 2017, for the 2018 Scribes Brief-Writing Award. Any brief that was deemed a "best brief" at a regional or national moot court competition is eligible. Please email for more information. 

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Congratulations to Sabrina DeFabritiis

Sabrina DeFabritiis of Suffolk University Law School has been appointed as Director of Bar Programs and Initiatives at her school.  

Sabrina is also the current Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research.

In this new role at her alma matter, Sabrina will oversee Suffolk’s bar review curriculum and co-curricular programs.  She also will work with outside partners, such as Barbri, on matters related to bar preparation, and she will be responsible for analyzing relevant bar passage data and recommending changes to our bar preparation efforts. With her expertise in bar preparation and extensive teaching experience in our first year curriculum, Sabrina brings a unique faculty perspective to the law school’s efforts to maximize student readiness, especially as Massachusetts transitions to the Uniform Bar Exam next year.  Sabrina will continue to serve as a Professor of Legal Writing; her director role will be in addition to her existing LPS responsibilities.

Professor DeFabritiis graduated, cum laude, from Suffolk University Law School and received her B.S., from Boston College. As a student, Professor DeFabritiis served as Vice President of the Moot Court Honor Board and the Journal of Trial & Appellate Advocacy. Additionally, she was a member of the Moot Court Tax Team, which won the National Competition in 2002. Before joining the faculty at Suffolk Law School, she clerked for the Justices of the Massachusetts Superior Court, and spent several years as an associate in the Boston office of Campbell Campbell Edwards & Conroy P.C., where she practiced in their advanced motions and appellate practice department.

Congratulations, Sabrina!

Hat tip to Kathy Elliott Vinson.

(mew)

Cornell is Hiring

The Lawyering Program at Cornell Law School seeks candidates for a full-time position commencing in the 2018-19 academic year. The year-long Lawyering course introduces first-year students to lawyering skills, with primary emphasis on legal writing, analysis, and research. Lawyering faculty collaborate to ensure a uniform core curriculum, but they retain substantial academic freedom. Law librarians teach the research component of the course.

Lawyering faculty teach one section of the Lawyering course and, after two years, also teach an upper-level, skills-related course.

Positions in the program are not tenure track but are eligible for long-term renewal. Entry-level faculty start with a three-year contract (eligible for renewal for another three years) and after six years are eligible for renewable, five-year contracts. The Dean may provide summer grants to faculty to work on individual and collective projects. Benefits are competitive and include a budget for research and travel.

Applicants must have a J.D., excellent academic credentials, a strong writing background, and substantial legal-practice experience (a minimum of three years is strongly preferred). Teaching experience is also preferred. We encourage applications from those whose background and experience would add to the diversity of the faculty. Interested candidates should apply using the following website: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/9465. Please submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, law-school transcript, the names of three references, and two writing samples. Questions may be referred to Joel Atlas, Director of the Lawyering Program, at [email protected]. The closing date for the receipt of applications is October 16, 2017. The school intends to interview candidates at the AALS recruitment conference in Washington, D.C., in November 2017.

The position advertised may lead to successive long-term contracts of five or more years. The professor hired will be permitted to vote in faculty meetings (with some limitations). The school anticipates paying an annual academic year base salary in the range of $80,000 to $89,999. The number of students enrolled in each semester of the courses taught by the legal research and writing professor will be 31 to 35.

Hat tip to Estelle McKee, Clinical Professor of Law, The Lawyering Program, Cornell Law School.

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Request for Proposals - New England Consortium of Legal Writing Teachers (NECLWT) Annual Conference

Legal Writing faculty are invited to submit proposals for the annual NECLWT conference on Friday, October 27, 2017 at the University of Connecticut School of Law in Hartford, Connecticut. The conference theme (for Halloween) will be “Tricks and Treats.” Topics can cover a broad spectrum of classroom and teaching challenges and issues that you have faced (“tricks”) and effective strategies for resolving them (“treats”), or any other subject that relates to engaging students in legal research and legal writing.

The conference organizers expect to have short (20 min) and long (60 min) sessions.  They welcome joint proposals. 

Legal Writing faculty from across the United States and Canada are encouraged to submit proposals. If you are interested in participating, please send a proposal and your c.v. to Professor Jessica Rubin at [email protected] no later than September 8, 2017 In your proposal, please give an estimate of how many minutes you need for your presentation.

 

Hat tips to Jessica Rubin and Mary Beattie  

 

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Ohio State is Hiring

The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law invites applications for a clinical-track faculty member to teach in its first-year legal research, analysis, and writing program, to begin in the 2018-2019 academic year. The new faculty member will be part of the College’s team of clinical-track faculty, law librarians, and tenure-track faculty who teach in Moritz’s nationally-recognized legal writing program. The faculty member will teach two sections of a two-credit legal writing class in the Fall Semester and two sections of a three-credit legal writing class in the Spring Semester. Enrollment in each class is expected to be no more than 20 students.

The position is a nontenure-track position with security reasonably similar to tenure, as provided by ABA Standard 405(c). Professors appointed to this clinical track must have a law degree and relevant practice and occupational experience in their areas of expertise and strong potential in all relevant areas of clinical or skills teaching, such as: supervising students in a skills classroom setting; classroom teaching; conforming to the ethical standards of applicable codes of professional responsibility; engaging in public service; expanding understanding of the law through preparation of written materials; and maintaining knowledge in the faculty member’s areas of expertise.

Annual salary range is $74,500 – $76,500, based on a nine-month renewable contract. The clinical faculty member will be hired for an initial probationary period of 3 to 5 years (with annual review) and will have full rights to participate in all College governance matters other than the appointment, promotion, and tenure of tenure-track faculty. Assuming satisfactory performance during the probationary period, the clinical faculty member will be eligible for promotion to a long-term renewable contract of 3 to 5 years that permits removal only for cause or financial exigency. The nine-month nature of the position brings with it eligibility for supplemental summer salary for research or other relevant contributions to the College, if the faculty member is interested. All Moritz College of Law clinical-track faculty also receive a full research and professional development budget. The College would consider lateral appointments (at the Associate Clinical Professor level) only for candidates with significant law school teaching experience.

A resume, references, and cover letter should be submitted to Professor Steven Huefner, Chair, Clinical Legal Writing Faculty Search Committee, at [email protected]. Applications will be reviewed beginning September 1, 2017, and will be accepted until the position is filled; preference will be given to applications received before September 15, 2017.  [NB: The College also is separately accepting applications for a tenure-track faculty member in several areas, including legal writing. For additional information on the tenure-track position, please see the College’s AALS job posting or contact Professor Daniel Tokaji, Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee, at [email protected].]

Hat tip to Anne E. Ralph.

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Vermont is Hiring

Vermont Law School invites applications for a full-time professor in its Legal Writing Program. The professor will begin work on July 1, 2018, with a two-year contract. This contract is renewable for another two-year term, followed by five-year renewable contracts after that. Legal Writing professors are voting members of the faculty and serve on faculty committees.

Professors in the program teach two courses, each a semester long.  In the 1L course, professors design their materials around a subject drawn from their professional interest and experience.  Professors abide by common course requirements, such as number of assignments and oral advocacy requirements, but beyond that each professor decides course content. In the 2L course, Appellate Advocacy, professors select cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court for the students to research, brief, and argue in a moot court setting.

Applicants must have a demonstrated commitment to teaching legal writing and should have experience practicing law or clerking.  Prior experience teaching legal writing is preferred.

Vermont Law School’s mission is to educate lawyers for the community and the world. The faculty believes that its scholarship, teaching and service should be meaningful and relevant to the local, national, and international communities. The law school is dedicated to building a diverse faculty, and it strongly encourages candidates of color, women, veterans, and members of other underrepresented groups to apply. Please submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and references to Vice Dean Stephanie J. Willbanks, Vermont Law School, 164 Chelsea Street, South Royalton, VT 05068.  Electronic applications are strongly preferred and can be submitted to [email protected].  Materials should be submitted by October 20, 2017, although submissions received after this time may be considered until the position is filled.

The position advertised may lead to successive long-term contracts of five or more years. The professor hired will be permitted to vote in faculty meetings. The school anticipates paying an annual academic year base salary in the range of $60,000 to $79,999. And the number of students enrolled in each semester of the courses taught is estimated at 41 to 45.

Hat tip to Professor Greg Johnson, Director, Legal Writing Program, Vermont Law School.

(mew)

Comments Sought on Revisions to ABA Standard 106 (Separate Locations and Branch Campuses)

The Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has approved for Notice and Comment proposed revisions to Standard 106 (Separate Locations and Branch Campuses) of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools. The proposed revisions and accompanying explanations can be found on the Section of Legal Education’s website.

Written comments on the proposed revisions are invited before Friday, September 22, 2017. A hearing on the proposed changes is scheduled for Thursday, September 28, 2017, at 2 p.m., at the ABA Headquarters in Chicago (321 N. Clark Street, 21st Floor, North Board Room).

Please send your written comments and requests to speak at the meeting to J.R. Clark, [email protected], by Friday, September 22, 2017.

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Congratulations

Congratulations to Seattle University School of Law for organizing and hosting a successful Western States Legal Writing Conference this past weekend.

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Call for Presenters for the New Scholars' Showcase - AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research

The Association of American Law Schools Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research (LWRR) is seeking participants for a “New Scholars Showcase” session on Thursday, January 4, 2018, from 3:30 – 4:45 p.m. during the 2018 AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. 

 

During this session, three newer scholars who teach legal writing and who have been selected through a competitive process described below will present their works-in-progress or recently completed article. Each scholar will have approximately 10-12 minutes to present, and the remainder of the session will be spent on questions and comments from the audience. The LWRR Section is seeking participation from both newer scholars and more experienced legal writing faculty.

 

Newer Scholar Participants

A “new scholar” is:

(1) anyone who teaches legal writing and has been in the legal academy for seven years or fewer or anyone who teaches legal writing who within the last seven years has moved into a position or had their position converted to one that requires publication; and

(2) who has a work-in-progress, an article accepted for publication (but not yet published), or an article that has been published since January 1, 2017.

 

A new scholar who meets the above requirements can apply to present that work at the New Scholars Showcase. That scholarship can be on any topic, using any method, at any level of controversy, and suitable for publication in any scholarly journal.

 

Applications from newer scholars will be due by 11:59 p.m. Central time, Friday, September 1, 2017. Please submit your application by email to Scott Fraley, Program Committee Co-Chair, at [email protected]. Please include “New Scholars Showcase” in your subject line. Each application should include the following information: (1) the author’s name, school affiliation, and years teaching in the legal academy (and, if applicable, years in position that requires publication); (2) an abstract of the article; (3) the current draft of the article; and (4) an indication of your interest in being matched up with a scholarly mentor. Please use Microsoft Word or the equivalent, but do not use PDF. By submitting an application, you are agreeing that you will go to San Diego in January in person to present your work.  

 

The LWRR Program Committee will then remove the identifying information from each application, review the applications, and select three applicants to present at the New Scholars Showcase session at AALS.  All applicants who indicate an interest will be paired with a mentor, and the committee anticipates publicizing the other applicants’ scholarship through the session to help provide additional opportunities for mentorship and feedback.

 

More Experienced Legal Writing Faculty Participants

We are also seeking experienced legal writing faculty to serve as mentors for the applicants. If you are interested in serving as a mentor, please email Scott Fraley, Program Committee Co-Chair, at [email protected], to indicate your interest by Friday, September 1, 2017. Please indicate “New Scholars Showcase Mentor” in your subject line. We will contact you once we have received the applications to begin the process of matching applicants with mentors. 

 

Program Committee

Lisa Mazzie (Marquette) Co-Chair

Scott Fraley (Baylor) Co-Chair

Mary Algero (Loyola New Orleans)

Lurene Contento (John Marshall Chicago)

Leslie Culver (California Western)

Tim Duff (Case Western)

Shailini George (Suffolk)

Dana Hill (Northwestern)

Abby Patthoff (Chapman)

Carol Wallinger (Rutgers)

 

Hat tip to Scott Fraley.

 

(mew)

 

Reminder: Central States Area Legal Writing Conference

The Central States Regional Writing Conference will be held on Friday, September 15, and Saturday, September 16, at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis.  There are 45 individual and panel presentations scheduled over the day and a half on a variety of topics. 

The law school is located in downtown Indianapolis only a short walk from the conference hotel, the JW Marriott.  Both the law school and the hotel are within walking distance of all downtown locations, including the Indianapolis Zoo, the NCAA Headquarters and Hall of Champions, the Eiteljorg Native American Museum, the beautiful AAA baseball park, the Circle Center Shopping Mall, and a wide variety of restaurants.

To access the conference website and register, please go to  https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/LWIconference/. 

Hat tips to Joel Schumm, Debby McGregor, Allison Martin, Jim Dimitri, and Cynthia Adams.

(mew)

UNLV is Hiring

The UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS—WILLIAM S. BOYD SCHOOL OF LAW invites applications for tenure-track Associate Professors or tenured full Professors of Law. UNLV Law, one of the nation’s leading public law schools, is a community of engaged scholars, teachers, and recognized community leaders. As the only law school in Nevada, UNLV Law enjoys strong state support and sustained engagement with communities across the state, including the judiciary, federal, state, and local government, and the non-profit and business sectors. Working in one of the most diverse cities in the country, members of the faculty have unique opportunities to impact their communities.  

 

Applicants for law school faculty positions should submit a letter of interest along with a detailed resume, at least three professional references, and cites or links to published works. With respect to our clinics and legal writing program, please note that UNLV Law has a unified tenure track; accordingly, professors who teach clinics or legal writing have all of the privileges and scholarly expectations that are associated with tenure. The school anticipates hiring as many as two new faculty colleagues, although of course the number of available positions is contingent on funding. We invite applications from rising and accomplished scholars in all areas. Applications are considered on a rolling basis, and appointments would likely begin with the 2018-2019 academic year. 

 

Contact:  Please send application materials to the Appointments Committee Coordinator, Teri Greenman, Faculty Appointments Committee, UNLV—Boyd School of Law, 4505 South Maryland Parkway – Campus Box 451003, Las Vegas, NV  89154-1003 or by email to [email protected]. 

 

The Appointments Committee members are Francine Lipman (chair), Rachel Anderson, Ian Bartrum, Mary Beth Beazley, Lydia Nussbaum, and Jeff Stempel.  UNLV is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity educator and employer committed to excellence through diversity.

 

The position advertised is a tenure-track appointment and the professor hired will be permitted to vote in faculty meetings. The school anticipates paying an annual academic year base salary in the range of $100,000 to over $120,000. The salary will depend on experience; the lower figures represent more entry-level type salaries, but the school welcomes applications from laterals! The number of students enrolled in each semester of the courses taught will be under 30 to 40 students. All UNLV faculty teach a three-courses-per-year load.  In the semester when they teach two courses, the number / semester increases if both are legal writing courses.  Most legal writing sections have 15-19 students. 

 

Hat tip to Mary Beth Beazley.

(mew) 

 

 

 

Central States Regional Legal Writing Conference

The Central States Regional Writing Conference is being held on Friday and Saturday, September 15-16, at the IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis.  

Conference Registration: To access the conference site and register, please go to  https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/LWIconference/.

Scholars' Forum: An ALWD Scholars Forum will be held before the start of the conference, on Friday, September 15, 2017, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM (lunch included). Participants can present a work in progress or even an idea or abstract to a group of legal writing faculty followed by a discussion of the work. Each participating scholar has twenty minutes to present the work, followed by a twenty-minute question and answer session. Presented works can either be early ideas or substantial drafts. If interested, please register for the Scholars Forum on or before August 25, 2017, at https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/LWIconference/ALWD-scholars.html

Conference Hotel: A block of rooms has been reserved at the JW Marriott, less than a 10-minute walk (0.4 miles) to the law school. The discounted room rate is $169/night. The block of rooms has been expanded but will fill soon.  You may reserve a room through the hotel website with the conference discount link.

Hat tip to Cynthia Adams.

(mew)

2017 Capital Area Legal Writing Conference

The 2017 Annual Capital Area Legal Writing Conference will be held on Saturday, October 21, 2017 at Regent University School of Law. There will be no conference fee.

Presentation proposals are invited on topics related to teaching legal writing, including evolving pedagogies, teaching ideas, developments in legal research and writing scholarship, teaching international students, ideas for using the legal writing curriculum to help students develop professional identities, assessment, and preparing our students to succeed in the workplace.  Presentations should be either 25 or 50 minutes in length.  Individual and panel presentations are welcome.  

The deadline to submit proposals is August 31, 2017. To submit a proposal, please contact Janis Kirkland at [email protected].

(mew)

Sign Up for an ALWD Committee by August 15, 2017

If you're a member of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD), you have a chance to participate in one of the organization's committees during the coming academic year. There are many committees to choose from on the 2017-18 Committee List. You should submit your "Committee Preference Form" to ALWD by August 15, 2017.

Leadership Committees

1. Bylaws Committee: Periodically reviews the ALWD By-Laws; suggests changes to the by-laws for board approval

2. New Directors Committee: Provides support to new directors; organizes meetings with new directors at conferences

3. Leadership & Development Committee: Provides mentoring opportunities to directors; helps develop the leadership skills of ALWD members; promotes leadership within ALWD

4. Diversity Committee: Serves as a resource for all Committees to ensure inclusion of diverse voices in ALWD’s programming and resources

Service Committees

1. Conference Program Committee: Designs the overall program; selects a plenary speaker or panel; drafts the Call for Proposals; reviews and selects the presentations; organizes the program schedule; notifies the presenters

2. Conference Site Committee: Works with the site host on all aspects of conference details; secures sponsorships

3. Website Committee: Maintains and updates website; provides suggestions to the board on improving the website; investigates existing platform and new platforms for use for an online Legal Communication and Rhetoric: JALWD

4. Survey Committee: Works with LWI on developing, administering, and maintaining the annual legal writing survey

5. New Member Outreach Committee: Welcomes new members to ALWD with events at conferences; assists members in finding ways to become involved with ALWD

6. Blackwell Reception: Works with LWI on organizing Blackwell Reception including location, catering, program, etc.

Teaching Committees

1. Teaching Grants Committee: Advertises ALWD’s summer grants for supporting development of teaching ideas and explains the process for applying; recommends recipients to the board; monitors recipients’ progress

2. Teaching Workshops Committee: Organizes program; advertises process; helps select speakers

Scholarship Committees

1. Visiting Scholars Committee: Advertises program and process by which ALWD funds an individual scholar’s visit to a school; recommends proposals to the board; works with site hosts as needed

2. Scholars Fora Committee: Advertises program for a small group of scholars to present works in progress led by a mentor; recommends host schools to the board; works with site hosts to organize workshop, including participants and mentors

3. Scholarship Grants: Advertises ALWD’s summer grants for supporting scholarship; recommends recipients to the board; monitors recipients’ progress

4. Publications (other than JALWD): Proposes new publications for board approval and then oversees the development of the publication

5. ALWD Guide Task Force: An on-going commitment to improve and maintain the quality of the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, including the companion exercises, by working with the publisher and the authors and making recommendations to the Board.

For questions, please contact ALWD President Megan McAlpin at [email protected]

If you're an ALWD member, you can find the Committee Preference Form at https://oregon.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6njcvtwBTkvXaPX

(mew)

Linda Berger Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Legal Writing Scholarship

The Association of Legal Writing Directors ("ALWD") has established the Linda Berger Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Legal Writing Scholarship. The award is named for the initial recipient, Linda Berger.

Linda Berger is the Family Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Her research, writing, and teaching converge on the study and practice of legal rhetoric, drawing on cognitive psychology as well as on composition, rhetoric, metaphor, analogy, and narrative theory. She is one of the co-editors of U.S. Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court (Cambridge 2016), the first volume in an ongoing series.

Professor Berger has been a leader in discipline building and professional development initiatives within the national legal writing community. She served as President of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) from 2014-16, President-Elect from 2012-14, and a member of the LWI Board of Directors from 2008-11 and from 2012 to the present.  Professor Berger was a founder and the long-time editor-in-chief of Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD; served on the editorial board of the LWI Monograph Series for six years; initiated and continues to co-edit the Law & Rhetoric e-Journal on SSRN's Legal Scholarship Network; and was one of the first ALWD Visiting Scholars in Legal Communication & Rhetoric. She also is a former member of the national board of directors of ALWD.

This award will be given every two years at ALWD’s Biennial Conference. This award focuses solely on scholarship. It celebrates those who have written influential articles, books, or essays, and otherwise had a major impact on scholarship, perhaps through making presentations, mentoring, serving on editorial boards of various publications, sponsoring scholarship workshops and fora—virtually everything related to scholarship.

Here is an excerpt of remarks that Professor Wanda M. Temm gave about Linda at the 2017 Biennial Conference last week at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis:

Without a doubt our rock star in legal writing scholarship, this modest lady, as that is how we all think of her, is humble, relaxed, warm, charming, and humorous—to list only a few of her many characteristics.

Indeed, her prolific work established legal writing within the legal academy as a true discipline with a doctrinal foundation on which to build its own body of scholarly literature.

Moreover, she has been generous in her efforts to support other scholars in the field, leading presentations, and workshops about legal writing scholarship, and helping new scholars find their voice.

There is perhaps no other individual in our community that has had the same profound impact on the discipline of legal writing than our recipient.

Indeed, this person spearheaded the creation of ALWD’s peer-reviewed journal: the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors, now known as Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD. 

The ALWD Board of Directors is honored to create and present the 2017 Linda Berger Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Legal Writing Scholarship to none other than Linda Berger.

Congratulations to Linda Berger and to ALWD. 

Hat tip to Professor Wanda M. Temm, Clinical Professor of Law Director of Bar Services University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

(mew)

Central States Area Legal Writing Conference

The Central States Regional Writing Conference will be held on Friday, September 15, and Saturday, September 16, at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis.  There are 45 individual and panel presentations scheduled over the day and a half on a variety of topics. 

The law school is located in downtown Indianapolis only a short walk from the conference hotel, the JW Marriott.  Both the law school and the hotel are within walking distance of all downtown locations, including the Indianapolis Zoo, the NCAA Headquarters and Hall of Champions, the Eiteljorg Native American Museum, the beautiful AAA baseball park, the Circle Center Shopping Mall, and a wide variety of restaurants.

To access the conference website and register, please go to  https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/LWIconference/. 

To reserve a room at the JW Marriott, please use the conference discount link.  The discounted room rate is $169/night. This special rate will not be available after August 15, and the block may fill before August 15. 

Hat tips to Joel Schumm, Debby McGregor, Allison Martin, Jim Dimitri, and Cynthia Adams.

(mew)

 

IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law

LRW Professor Julie Spanbauer Named Vice Dean for Academic Affairs of The John Marshall Law School in Chicago

Professor Julie Spanbauer, a lawyering skills professor at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, has been named as the law school's Vice Dean for Academic Affairs. She had previously served since 2015 as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs.

After graduating from Valparaiso University Law School, Julie Spanbauer served as a federal judicial clerk for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. She also earned an LL.M. from Northwestern University School of Law.

Since joining the John Marshall faculty in 1990, she has published numerous articles in the areas of employment discrimination, constitutional law, and women's issues. She was named a Fulbright Specialist and taught at the Institute of Technology Law, National Chiao Tung University in Taipei, Taiwan.

She is a frequent and popular speaker on various panels, including presentations at legal writing conferences and the Global Legal Skills Conference.

She has lectured in Ireland and in China. She served as the program director for two programs sponsored by the International Law Institute in Washington, D.C. to prepare international LL.M. students to enter law schools throughout the United States. She also served as a member of the board of directors of the Friends of Battered Women and their Children, a not-for-profit organization providing counseling, advocacy, and education services for abused women and their children.

At The John Marshall Law School, Professor Spanbauer teaches Employment Discrimination, Contracts, and Lawyering Skills.

Congratulations to Vice Dean Spanbauer on her new appointment.

(mew)

LRW Professor Ardath Hamann Named as Associate Dean for Faculty Development at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago

Professor Ardath A. Hamann has been named as Associate Dean for Faculty Development at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago.

Professor Hamann has been actively involved with John Marshall's moot court program for more than 30 years. As director of Moot Court, she advised the Moot Court Executive Board and Moot Court Council and supervised the Fred. F. Herzog Moot Court Competition. She taught an advanced advocacy seminar for team members and coached countless moot court teams. Many of our readers may have met her at various legal writing conferences over the years or most recently at the Second Biennial Moot Court Conference sponsored by the Legal Writing Institute and hosted at The John Marshall Law School. 

Professor Hamann specializes in antitrust law. For six years after graduation from law school, she was a member of the Antitrust Division of the Illinois Attorney General's Office, litigating criminal, civil penalty, and civil treble damage actions in state and federal courts. She has presented papers on current developments in U.S. antitrust law at conferences in the Czech Republic and has conducted training workshops on legal drafting for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Professor Hamann also counsels charitable organizations. She has advised and served on the boards of a number of religious and educational institutions.

Professor Hamann joined the faculty of The John Marshall Law School in 1984. She teaches Administrative Law, Antitrust, Corporations, Estates and Trusts, and Lawyering Skills.

Congratulations to Ardath Hamann on her appointment as Associate Dean for Faculty Development at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago.

(mew)

Georgetown University Law Center Selected as Host of the 2020 LWI Conference

Congratulations to the Georgetown University Law Center, which was selected as the host site for the 2020 Legal Writing Institute Biennial Conference. The anticipated dates of the 2020 LWI conference are July 15-18, 2020.

The 2018 LWI Conference will be held at Marquette University School of Law in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from July 11-14, 2018.

The LWI Biennial Conference is the Papa Bear of all legal writing conferences, one that simply cannot be missed. The 2018 and 2020 conferences mark a return to law school venues (rather than hotels or resorts).

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