Legal Writing Prof Blog

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Global Legal Skills Conference in Melbourne

The 13th Global Legal Skills Conference is jointly organized by The John Marshall Law School in Chicago and Melbourne Law School in Australia. It will be held December 10-12, 2018 in Melbourne, with walking tours of Melbourne before the conference on December 9 and a cultural excursion after the conference on December 13.

 

The conference features more than 100 speakers from 20 countries. The conference program can be viewed at https://glsc.jmls.edu/2018/program/ This is the first time that the conference is being held in Australia. (Previous conferences have been held in Chicago, Washington DC, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Italy.)

 

If you are attending the conference, remember to check whether you need a visa to visit Australia. https://glsc.jmls.edu/2018/visas/

 

If you're not attending the conference this year, please join us next year when The John Marshall Law School and Arizona State University School of Law will hold the conference in Phoenix, Arizona on December 12-14, 2019. Information about that GLS-14 conference will be available after we finish the conference in Melbourne, but please save the dates now.

 

(mew)

Tina Stark Wins 2019 Golden Pen Award

The Board of Directors of the Legal Writing Institute announced that Tina L. Stark will be the recipient of the 2019 Golden Pen Award.

Professor Stark is well known in the legal writing community as a leader in teaching transactional skills and as the author of the groundbreaking textbook, Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do (Aspen, 2d ed. 2013). In 2012, she received the Burton Award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education. Here is link to a video of that award presentation.

The Golden Pen Award honors those who make significant contributions to advance the cause of better legal writing. These contributions may take any form, such as promoting the use of clear language in public documents, improving the quality of legal writing instruction, advocating for better writing within the legal community, outstanding scholarship or journalism about legal writing or legal topics, or exceptional writing in law practice. The award is normally given to someone who is not an active member of LWI, but active members are considered in exceptional circumstances.

The LWI Awards Committee recommended Professor Stark for the 2019 Golden Pen Award in part because, as one nominator wrote, Tina is “a world-renowned educator—a pioneer in the field of teaching transactional law and skills. She is revered in teaching circles of legal writing and transactional drafting professors and well-respected by professors who teach transactional doctrine.” The LWI Board unanimously approved this recommendation.

The award will be presented at the Blackwell Award Reception on Friday, January 4, at the AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. The reception will take place from 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. at Chart C, Riverside Building, in the Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel.

Hat tip to LWI and AWLD.

(mew)

LWI One-Day Workshop at the University of Illinois

The Legal Writing Institute is holding one-day workshops across the country in late November and early December. One of the many sites will be at the University of Illinois College of Law on December 1, 2018. Click here for details of the program.

Hat tip to Rummana Alam.

(mew)

LWI One-Day Workshop at Chapman on November 30

On November 30, 2018, the Chapman University Fowler School of Law is hosting a Legal Writing Institute One-Day Workshop, #amwriting: Reaching the Next Generation of Legal Writers.

The workshop will include a practitioner panel and presentations on topics including teaching and reaching law students in the post-millennial generation, maintaining empathy while keeping students accountable, and helping students cultivate a professional identity online.

The conference schedule, as well as registration and travel information, is available by clicking here.

Hat tip to Prof. Abigail Patthoff, Professor of Legal Writing at the Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University.

(mew)

 

Early Bird Rate for the AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans

The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) will hold its 2019 annual meeting in New Orleans from January 2-6, 2019. Early bird registration rates are good until November 14. Visit the AALS Annual Meeting website to see the program and to register. Remember also to register for the Luncheon for the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research.

(mew)

Law in the Post-Truth Era: Legal Writing Professors Participate in Law Review Symposium at Washburn

Several legal writing professors participated in the annual symposium of the Washburn Law Journal. Participants included Professors Cara Cunningham Warren (University of Detroit Mercy School of Law), Joy Kanwar (Brooklyn Law School), Cathern Koehlert-Page (Barry University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law), Teri McMurtry-Chubb (Mercer University School of Law), and Anne Mullins (Stetson University College of Law). The symposium theme was "Law in the Post-Truth Era."

 

Hat tip to Emily Grant

 

(mew)

 

Save the Date: 2019 ALWD Conference in Boston

The 2019 Biennial Conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) will be held May 29-31, 2019 at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. The theme of the conference will be "Time for Transformative Leadership: Teaching and Learning."

 

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Save the Date: 2019 Applied Legal Storytelling Conference

Save the Date! The seventh Applied Legal Storytelling Conference will be held July 9-11, 2019 at the University of Colorado.

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LWI One-Day Workshop on November 30, 2018 in Pittsburgh

The Legal Writing Institute will hold a One-Day Workshop at University of Pittsburgh School of Law on Friday, November 30, 2018. The program is called "Leveraging Technology in the Legal Writing Classroom to Prepare Law Students for Practice." 

Register for the conference through LWI here. The conference schedule, as well as travel information, is available here. 

Hat tip to Leigh Argentieri Coogan, Visiting Professor of Legal Writing at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law

(mew)

LWI One-Day Workshop in Louisville on December 8, 2018: Have Mercy on Your Audience

The University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law is hosting a one-day workshop on December 8.  The registration link is here.

The theme of the Louisville workshop is Have Mercy: Showing Empathy for Your Audience. This theme encompasses having empathy for our students and our communities, as well as teaching our students to do the same in their writing and future work. 

Presentations will include:

• assessing client counseling in doctrinal exams
• having empathy in a deadline-driven practice
• strategies for reaching diverse audiences
• incorporating social justice concepts into legal writing classes
• the importance of using gender neutral pronouns in the legal writing classroom
• helping bashful students succeed in oral advocacy

 

A special hotel rate is available at the Hilton Garden Inn Louisville Airport. Contact the hotel and ask for the "Legal Writing Institute" block. The cutoff date for our rate is November 7, 2018. 

 

Hat tip to Dr. JoAnne Sweeney at the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.

 

(mew)