Legal Writing Prof Blog

Best of the Best: How to Submit Your Law School's Winning Brief for a Scribes Brief-Writing Award

Did your school win a best-brief award last year?

Here's a final reminder that Scribes--The American Society of Legal Writers--is now accepting submissions for the 2022 Brief-Writing Award. The deadline for submitting briefs is October 3, 2022.

Scribes launched its Brief-Writing Award in 1996 to recognize and celebrate excellent student-written briefs. Scribes believes that legal writing is of paramount importance to law students and their careers, and it hopes to encourage good legal writing by recognizing its finest examples.

The Scribes Brief-Writing Award for 2022 considers submissions of moot-court briefs that have won first place in a national or regional moot-court competition during the 2021-22 academic year (August 2021 to June 2022). The award committee then selects the best briefs from all of the winning briefs submitted.

Scribes has opened nominations for its 2022 Brief-Writing Award and will accept nominations until October 3, 2022. The award committee will consider briefs from the 2021-2022 academic year. The award winners will be announced early next year. 

Instructions for submitting a brief for the Scribes competition:

1.      By October 3, 2022, email an electronic copy of the winning brief to scribes[email protected].  

2.     The subject line of the email should indicate that it’s a Scribes brief nomination from “___ Law School" (the students’ law school, not a sponsoring law school).

3.     The body of the e-mail must include the following information:

• Name of the competition
• Place where the brief was named best brief (e.g., “finals,” “SW regional”)
• Names of the students who wrote the brief
• Students’ school
• Name of the students’ coach or advisor, if any

4.     The brief itself cannot include any information that identifies the student authors or their school. Please check the cover page, signature pages, and headers or footers.

5.     Submit the brief as a PDF file if possible, although we will accept Word format if necessary.

6.     The brief should be submitted as a single file.

Please contact Scribes Executive Director Philip Johnson at [email protected] if you have any questions about submitting a brief for the competition.

Mark E. Wojcik, Immediate Past President, Scribes--The American Society of Legal Writers

Loyola Los Angeles is Hiring

LMU LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL invites applications for a full-time position of Director of Academic Success to lead Loyola Law School’s Academic Success Program (ASP), which helps JD students, especially those who are struggling academically, succeed in law school and graduate. The Director of Academic Success reports to the Associate Dean for Faculty and collaborates with various departments and directors, including the Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion and the Director of Bar Programs, as well as the faculty who teach in the Program. Responsibilities of the Director of Academic Success include:

• Providing academic support and counseling to ASP students and students who are at academic risk on a range of issues including law school skills, academic policies, graduation requirements, and course planning. 
• Developing and implementing academic success programming, including but not limited to workshops for 1Ls on law school skills and individual or group meetings with ASP students and students who are at academic risk to help them improve their academic performance. 
• Teaching and coordinating the curriculum for Loyola’s one-semester, 3-unit Law & Process course, which teaches legal analysis, examination, and practice skills in the context of the study of privacy torts and is designed to build law school and bar examination skills. Law & Process faculty collaborate to ensure a uniform core curriculum and assessment approach but retain substantial academic freedom to develop and teach their own classes. Depending on the interest of the candidate and needs of the law school, the teaching package could also include teaching Legal Research and Writing (LRW), a 4-unit year-long course that introduces 1Ls to legal research, writing, and analysis.  
• Teaching in Loyola’s three-week Summer Institute Program, which is an academic program during the summer for approximately 40 incoming students that builds essential law school skills (i.e., legal reasoning, analytical skills, and writing skills) and develops a sense of community among students and faculty. 
• Collecting and analyzing data and developing reports regarding the academic performance of ASP students including assessing student performance, effectiveness of academic interventions, and graduation and retention rates.  
• Developing a comprehensive communication strategy to inform JD students about ASP workshops, resources, counseling, and requirements, including developing and maintaining content for the ASP webpage.
  

Minimum Qualifications  

• JD from an ABA-accredited law school and admission to a state bar. 
• Three to five years of practice and/or teaching experience. 
• Ability to handle confidential information, exhibit good judgment, communicate clearly and effectively, and work collaboratively with a diverse community of students, faculty, staff, and external audiences. 
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. 
• Ability to manage multiple competing priorities and meet deadlines. 

Salary and rank are commensurate with experience.   

 

Applicants should submit a cover letter indicating an interest in the position, curriculum vitae, diversity statement, the names of three references, a writing sample, and any teaching evaluations from the last two years via this link.  Applications should be submitted by October 16, 2022, but applications will be accepted and reviewed after that date until the position is filled.  They hope to make hiring decisions by the end of 2022.

 

UIC Law Student Chapter of Scribes

Scribes--The American Society of Legal Writers--is an organization with individual and institutional memberships. Some of the law schools that are institutional members also have law student chapters of Scribes.

One of the larger and more active student chapters of Scribes is the one at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. The new officers for 2022-2023 are:

• Carly Strand, President
• Allie Magee, Vice President
• Abbey Schneff, Secretary
• Jack Waanders, Student Outreach

President Strand follows Co-Presidents Denise Luna and Garrett Lee Walker, who, in turn, followed the previous president, Anthony Gasper.

The UIC Law Student Chapter of Scribes is planning student events for the coming academic year. Previous speakers at their meetings included Justice Mary Jane Theis, who was just named as the next Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

(mew)

Western Regional Legal Writing Conference

The University of Oregon School of Law will host the Western Regional Legal Writing Conference on October 7-8, 2022.

(mew)

Just Published! The Scribes Manual for Law Review Editors

Hundreds of law reviews are published in the United States, with every accredited law school hosting at least one law review or journal. These publications are not widely read but instead serve a targeted audience of academics, policymakers, lawyers, judges, and students interested in the subject matter of a particular article. Even if the number of readers of a specific article is not large, that article may prove to be the catalyst for a change in the law. Not every article will have such an impact, of course, but publication of an article in a law review allows new ideas to grow.

The potential power of law reviews to effect change is curious, however, because most of those law reviews are edited by law students rather than experienced editors. 

So if you’re a law review editor or you aspire to be one, or if you’re a faculty advisor to a law review, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Scribes—The American Society of Legal Writers—has just released The Scribes Manual for Law Review Editors.

The book, published this month by Carolina Academic Press, was edited by two self-confessed “law review nerds,” Dean Darby Dickerson and Professor Brooke J. Bowman. Dean Dickerson is the President and Dean of Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles; she’s also a Past President of Scribes and a Past President of the Association of American Law Schools. Professor Bowman teaches legal research and writing at Stetson University College of Law; she’s also served on several editorial boards and chairs the Scribes Law Review Award Committee.

How did this book come about? An organization known as the National Conference of Law Reviews (NCLR) previously held annual conferences to train incoming law review editors, but those haven’t been held since 2017. The NCLR essentially evaporated as an organization, leaving a tremendous void in preparing incoming law review editors.

Scribes stepped in to fill that void with this wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, comprehensive manual for law review editors. At 323 pages, this volume is “the definitive source for student-editors who seek to excel in their positions and improve their journals.” It contains the wisdom and advice of law professors and law librarians who have worked with law review editors for many years. Together they cover almost every aspect of producing a law review.

The full list of 19 chapters and chapter authors reveals how comprehensive the book is:

1. Why Law Reviews Exist, by Maureen B. Collins (University of Illinois Chicago School of Law)
2. Law Review as an Academic Activity, by Pamela Wilkins (Mercer University School of Law)
3. The Business of Law Reviews, by Darby Dickerson (Southwestern Law School)
4. Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive Practices for the Law Review and Legal Scholarship, by Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb (University of Illinois Chicago School of Law)
5. Understanding Philosophical Movements Law Review Editors May Encounter, Kristen David Adams (Stetson University College of Law)
6. Working with Law Librarians, by Andrew W. Lang (University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Biddle Law Library) and Annalee Hickman Pierson (Brigham Young University Howard W. Hunter Law Library)
7. Common Editorial Positions and the Selection of Editors, by Lindsey Gustafson (University of Arkansas at Little Rock William S. Bowen School of Law)
8. Effective Editorial Board Transitions, by Austin Martin Williams (Mercer University School of Law)
9. Leadership Styles for Law Review Editors, by Ashley R. Hilliard (North Carolina Central University School of Law)
10. Selecting Journal Candidates, by Wes E. Henricksen (Barry University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law)
11. Orientation and Training for Editors, New Staff Members, and Returning Staff Members, by Carolyn V. Williams (University of North Dakota School of Law)
12. Working with Student Authors, Kristen E. Murray (Temple University Beasley School of Law) and Jessica Lynn Wherry (Georgetown Law)
13. Author Relations, by Mark Cooney (Western Michigan University Cooley Law School)
14. The Editing Process, by Michael J. Higdon (University of Tennessee College of Law)
15. Journal Production and Dissemination, by Brent Domann (Michigan State University College of Law)
16. Post-Production Consequences, by Christina Anna George (Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Chutick Law Library)
17. Managing Copyright Issues for Law Reviews, by Benjamin J. Keele (Indiana University McKinney School of Law Ruth Lilly Law Library)
18. Policies for Law Reviews on Archiving Internet Sources, by Clanitra Stewart Nejdl (Vanderbilt Law School Alyne Queener Masey Law Library)
19. The Editorial Adventure, Brooke J. Bowman (Stetson University College of Law)

Susan Hanley Duncan, Dean of the University of Mississippi School of Law and the 2020-2022 President of Scribes, also contributed a preface to the volume.

Each of the 19 chapters starts with “Learning Objectives” to tell readers what they’ll learn in that chapter. And each chapter ends with “Key Takeaways” of the main points covered in that chapter.

This book should not just be in the office of every law review but in the hands of every law review editor. It will inspire them to improve their journals and remind them of the importance of their work. Parts of the book will also encourage editorial boards and faculty advisors to expand access to journal editorial boards and to publish authors whose voices may not otherwise be heard.

There hasn’t been a book like this before, a book to help students understand and appreciate solicitation and editing of articles, leadership and operations of a law journal, academic and personal mentorship of editors and staff, and relationships with authors. 

Click here for information on how to order a copy of the book.

Mark E. Wojcik (mew)

Disclosure: Mark Wojcik is a Past President of Scribes. He was not involved in the preparation of this book. 

Second Draft Invites Submissions

Here's a reminder that you're invited to submit short articles for publication in the fall issue of The Second Draft. Details are below.

Submission Details

Please submit your article in Word format by email on or before September 15, 2022, to [email protected].

The subject line of your email and the file name of your Word document should both look like this:  Last Name First Name_Article Submission_Issue Year.

So, for example, my subject line and file name would look like this: Keith Elizabeth_Title of Article_September 2022

The editors encourage all members of the legal writing community to submit articles, and they’d particularly like to encourage new and newer members to submit articles. Submissions are typically 500 to 3000 words and lightly footnoted, but they'll consider pieces of almost any length. 

Hat tip to Professor Elizabeth A. Keith at the American University Washington College of Law

(mew)

Best of the Best: How to Submit Your Law School's Winning Brief for a Scribes Brief-Writing Award

Did your school win a best-brief award last year?

Here's a reminder that Scribes--The American Society of Legal Writers--is now accepting submissions for the 2022 Brief-Writing Award. The deadline for submitting briefs is October 3, 2022.

Scribes launched its Brief-Writing Award in 1996 to recognize and celebrate excellent student-written briefs. Scribes believes that legal writing is of paramount importance to law students and their careers, and it hopes to encourage good legal writing by recognizing its finest examples.

The Scribes Brief-Writing Award for 2022 considers submissions of moot-court briefs that have won first place in a national or regional moot-court competition during the 2021-22 academic year (August 2021 to June 2022). The award committee then selects the best briefs from all of the winning briefs submitted.

Scribes has opened nominations for its 2022 Brief-Writing Award and will accept nominations until October 3, 2022. The award committee will consider briefs from the 2021-2022 academic year. The award winners will be announced early next year. 

Instructions for submitting a brief for the Scribes competition:

1.      By October 3, 2022, email an electronic copy of the winning brief to scribes[email protected].  

2.     The subject line of the email should indicate that it’s a Scribes brief nomination from “___ Law School" (the students’ law school, not a sponsoring law school).

3.     The body of the e-mail must include the following information:

• Name of the competition
• Place where the brief was named best brief (e.g., “finals,” “SW regional”)
• Names of the students who wrote the brief
• Students’ school
• Name of the students’ coach or advisor, if any

4.     The brief itself cannot include any information that identifies the student authors or their school. Please check the cover page, signature pages, and headers or footers.

5.     Submit the brief as a PDF file if possible, although we will accept Word format if necessary.

6.     The brief should be submitted as a single file.

Please contact Scribes Executive Director Philip Johnson at [email protected] if you have any questions about submitting a brief for the competition.

Mark E. Wojcik, Immediate Past President, Scribes--The American Society of Legal Writers

Michigan State is Hiring

Michigan State Law invites applications from entry-level and lateral candidates a full-time, tenure-track faculty position in health care law and policy with an emphasis on inequities in public and private health care systems. They seek applicants with a commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarly achievement. 

Please email application materials or nominations to Professor Tiffani Darden, Co-Chair of Faculty Appointments Committee, [email protected]. More information about the Law College can be found at www.law.msu.edu.

Hat tip to Catherine M. Grosso.

(mew)

Nominations Open for AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research

Call for Nominations: AALS Section Officer and Executive Committee Members for the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research

Please consider nominating yourself or a colleague for an officer position (Secretary) or an Executive Committee member position. Self-nominations are permitted and encouraged. If you are nominating another person for a position, please make sure that person is aware of your nomination. You may nominate a single person for alternative positions (i.e., Person 1 is nominated for the position of Secretary or for Executive Committee member).

Secretary: The Secretary produces multiple issues of our Section newsletter, the first in the spring following the annual meeting and the second in the fall before the next annual meeting. Nominees for Secretary should be prepared to serve as Chair-elect and Chair of the Section in succeeding years and should attend all AALS meetings while serving as an officer. Previous service on the Executive Committee is encouraged, but not required.

Executive Committee Members: Executive Committee members serve as advisory counselors to the Section's officers, providing their insights and recommendations on positions and activities undertaken by the Section via periodic conference calls and emails. Each Executive Committee member also serves as a liaison to at least one Section Committee and is in regular email or phone contact with the Chair(s) of that Committee. Executive Committee members also cast votes and give advice regarding the recommendations of the Program, Nominations, and Awards Committees, which decide the programs put on at the AALS Annual meeting, recommend the slate of the Section's officers and Executive Committee members for the following year, and determine the recipient of the annual Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research Section Award. Attendance by Executive Committee members at the annual AALS meeting in January is encouraged, but not required.

The Nominations Committee will review the submissions and make recommendations to the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee will nominate a slate of members for approval at the Section’s Business Meeting.

Please send nominations to Alyssa Dragnich and Ezra Ross, co-chairs of the Nominations Committee, [email protected] and [email protected], by September 26, 2022. The nomination should identify the position(s) that the nominee is interested in and provide the nominee’s name, contact information, a brief statement about the nominee’s qualifications, and why the nominee would like to serve. It is particularly helpful to specify particular reasons the nominee is qualified to serve on the Executive Committee or as Secretary. CVs are encouraged but not required.

Under AALS rules, only those from AALS member schools may be elected to Section leadership. Officers and executive committee members must be faculty at a regular member law school of the AALS.

Hat tips to Alyssa Dragnich and Ezra Ross.

(mew)

UIC is Hiring Adjunct Faculty

The University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, Chicago’s only public law school, seeks candidates for adjunct faculty positions to teach classes in the Law School’s Juris Doctor and Master of Laws degree programs.

 

These are part-time positions with modest compensation. While adjunct faculty may not be eligible for many benefits, such as health care, they may still be eligible to participate in the State Universities Retirement System.

 

Typically, adjunct professors teach one course per academic year. Specific classes and programs for which the Law School anticipates hiring adjunct faculty in the near future are posted at https://go.uic.edu/lawadjuncts.

 

Adjuncts generally teach experiential classes (including Lawyering Skills and Trial Advocacy) or advanced doctrinal classes in specialized fields such as Intellectual Property and Health Law. Experiential classes are normally taught at the Law School in Chicago’s downtown Loop. Classes may be taught at the Law School or online, and in some instances, adjuncts also develop online classes for additional compensation. Adjuncts are required to participate in orientation and training sessions and to comply with academic and institutional policies. A learning management system is used in both live and online classes to post syllabi and other materials and communicate with students.

 

Candidates must have a Juris Doctor degree from an ABA-approved law school or its equivalent from a foreign country, at least five years of relevant law practice experience, a record of or potential for excellent teaching, and experience with or willingness to learn the Blackboard learning management system. In addition, admission to a state or foreign bar (or inactive/retired status) is expected for most adjunct faculty positions, and candidates must be in good standing with any bar to which they have been admitted.

 

For fullest consideration, applicants should submit by October 21, 2022, a resume or curriculum vitae, names of three references familiar with the applicant’s practice or teaching credentials, and a letter of intent identifying specific classes for which the applicant wishes to be considered via https://jobs.uic.edu. (The University's course catalog is at https://catalog.uic.edu? courses appear under the Law School’s subject codes, which can be found at https://go.uic.edu/lawadjuncts.)

 

(mew)