Legal Writing Prof Blog

AALS Section on Global Engagement Outstanding Achievement Award Winner Announced

The Association of American Law Schools' Section on Global Engagement has announced that the 2023 Winner of its Outstanding Achievement Award is Professor David Austin of the California Western School of Law.

The Award will be presented to Professor Austin next month during the AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego.

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AALS Comparative Law Section Announces Winner of 2023 Tushnet Prize

The Association of American Law Schools' Section on Comparative Law has announced that the winner of the 2023 Tushnet Prize is Professor Anna Conley of the University of Montana Alexander Blewett III School of Law. She was recognized for her article, "Comparing Essential Components of Transnational Jurisdiction: A Proposed Comparative Methodology," which was published in the Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law. Professor Conley's article is an updated and condensed version of her dissertation for her Doctor of Laws in Comparative Law from the McGill University Faculty of Law.

Professor Conley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Montana, where her areas of expertise include civil litigation, comparative law, international law, and human rights. She has a J.D. from the George Washington Law School, and an LL.M. and Doctor of Civil Laws (D.C.L.) from the McGill University Faculty of Law. She has litigated many large-scale complex cases, participated in several rule of law initiatives, and published extensively in international and comparative law. She was an adjunct professor at the University of Montana Department of Political Science teaching Constitutional Law, International Law and Comparative Law from 2017 to 2021. She also was an adjunct professor at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law teaching Global Perspectives on Law and Public International Law from 2007 to 2016.

The Tushnet Prize recognizes scholarly excellence in any subject of comparative law by an untenured scholar at an AALS Member School. The Prize is given to the author or authors of a scholarly article judged to have made an important contribution in the field of comparative law. For the 2023 award, this article must have been published in an academic journal between July 2021 and November 2022.

The Prize was awarded for the first time at the 2020 AALS Annual Meeting. All untenured scholars—including but not limited to tenure-track professors, visiting assistant professors, lecturers, academic fellows, doctoral candidates—are eligible.

The Tushnet Prize is named for Mark Tushnet, a former president of the Association of American Law Schools and the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. A former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, Professor Tushnet is an authoritative voice in constitutional law and theory. His scholarship spans all areas of public law, including comparative constitutional law, a field in which he has co-authored a leading casebook. A respected teacher, a devoted mentor, and an influential scholar, he retired from the Harvard faculty in June 2020.

Professor Conley joins this list of previous winners of the Tushnet Prize:

• Mark Jia (Harvard Law School) (2022)
• Pamela Bookman (Fordham University School of Law) (2021)
• Jorge Farinacci (Inter-American University of Puerto Rico School of Law) (2020)

The AALS Comparative Law Section Awards Ceremony will be held on Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 12:00 p.m. in the Marriott Grand Ballroom 12, Lobby Level, North Tower, Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina Hotel.

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AALS Law Libraries Section Award for Outstanding Service and Contributions

The Association of American Law Schools' Section on Law Libraries and Legal Information announced that the winner of its Section Award for Outstanding Service and Contributions to the Profession is Anne Klinefelter of the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Professor Klinefelter is Director of the Law Library and Henry P. Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law at UNC School of Law. She teaches courses in privacy law and writes and speaks on information law and policy topics, particularly as these areas apply to libraries and legal information management. As Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communications Technologies in Fall of 2019, she taught United States Privacy Law at the University of Helsinki and researched aspects of European Union data protection law. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Future of Privacy Forum. Her leadership in the law librarianship profession was recognized in 2019 with the Frederick Charles Hicks Award for Outstanding Contributions to Academic Law Librarianship from the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) section on Academic Law Libraries. In 2012 she received the AALL Distinguished Lecturer Award in 2012 for her work in privacy law and policy relating to libraries.

The AALS award will be presented to Professor Klinefelter next month at the AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego.

(mew)

AALS LWRR Section Award

The Association of American Law Schools' Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research announced that its 2023 Section Award Winner is Laura Graham of the Wake Forest University School of Law.

Laura Graham has been teaching Legal Analysis, Writing, & Research and Appellate Advocacy at Wake Forest since 1999. Her research and speaking interests center on how to maximize beginning law students' early success in legal writing. She is a regular contributor to various state and national bar journals, where she provides writing refreshers for practicing attorneys. Prior to joining the faculty, Laura served as judicial clerk for Judge Ralph Walker of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and was in private practice in Jacksonville, North Carolina, specializing in domestic law and appellate practice. 

The AALS Section Award will be presented next month at the AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego. Members of the AALS Section Award Committee were:

• Co-Chair – Michelle Zakarin, Touro              
• Co-Chair – Whitney Heard, Houston             
• Candace Centeno, Villanova                          
• DeLeith Duke Gossett, Texas Tech                
• Wendy-Adele Humphrey, Texas Tech           
• N.E. Millar, Widener                                      
• Myra Orlen, Western New England               
• Sara Ricks, Rutgers                                        
• Sandra Simpson, Gonzaga                              
• Kristen Tiscione, Georgetown                        
• Maureen Van Neste, Boston College             

Hat tip to AALS LWRR Section Chair Lori D. Johnson, UNLV

(mew)

Nominations for the Tushnet Prize for Best Article on Comparative Law

AALS Section on Comparative Law 

Mark Tushnet Prize in Comparative Law 

Call for Nominations

The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Comparative Law seeks nominations of scholarly articles for the “Mark Tushnet Prize” to recognize scholarly excellence in any subject of comparative law by an untenured scholar at an AALS Member School.

The Prize will be given to the author(s) of a scholarly article judged to have made an important contribution in the field of comparative law. This article must have been published in an academic journal between July 2021 and November 2022.

The Prize was awarded for the first time at the 2020 AALS Annual Meeting. All untenured scholars—including but not limited to tenure-track professors, visiting assistant professors, lecturers, academic fellows, doctoral candidates—are eligible.

Nominations for the 2023 Tushnet Prize should be sent by email to Professor Mark E. Wojcik at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law [[email protected]] no later than November 30, 2022. Nominations should include the full name, institutional affiliation, and contact information for the nominated scholar, as well as a citation for the article. A PDF version of the published article would also be appreciated. Self-nominations are welcomed.

For all questions, please contact Professor Mark Wojcik [[email protected] or 312-987-2391], Chair of the AALS Section on Comparative Law.

About Mark Tushnet 

Mark Tushnet, a former president of the Association of American Law Schools, is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. A former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, Tushnet is an authoritative voice in constitutional law and theory. His scholarship spans all areas of public law, including comparative constitutional law, a field in which he has co-authored a leading casebook. A respected teacher, a devoted mentor, and an influential scholar, he retired from the Harvard faculty in June 2020.

(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 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)

Second Draft Invites Submissions

Here's a reminder that if your summer involved working on an article related to legal writing and pedagogy, you're invited to submit your piece 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)

Scholars Workshop

In conjunction with the Western Regional Legal Writing Conference, Oregon Law will host a Scholars Workshop/Forum – thanks to funding by the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD). The scholar events will take place on Friday, October 7, 2022, 10:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. just before the conference.

 

For the Scholars Workshop, 10:00-12:00, participants should have a draft or detailed outline to share. These documents will be circulated the week before the event. A few newer scholars who are curious about the workshop setting may participate if space allows.

 

The Scholars Forum, 12:00-1:30, is an opportunity for newer scholars (or potential scholars) to get feedback on possible ideas for articles or essays. For this event, we welcome a mix a newer scholars and experienced scholars to provide insights and support. Lunch will be provided for the forum, again thanks to ALWD.

 

Hat tip to Suzanne Rowe.

 

(mew)

University of Illinois Chicago is Hiring

University of Illinois Chicago School of Law invites applications for:

1. a tenured or tenure-track faculty and director of its Intellectual Property Center (more information about the IP Center can be found here: https://law.uic.edu/academics/centers/ip-privacy/ ); and
2. two entry-level tenure-track candidates to teach Property, Torts, Legal Research and Writing, with secondary needs of Criminal Law, Professional Responsibility, and Business Associations.

Candidates must have a Juris Doctor from an ABA-approved law school or its equivalent from a foreign country; record of teaching excellence or demonstrated potential to become an excellent teacher and record of high-quality scholarship or demonstrated potential to produce high-quality scholarship; and demonstrated interested in serving the academy, the community, and legal profession at an urban, public, Research 1 university. Excellent writing and communication skills and demonstrated ability to mentor students is highly preferred. Salary, academic rank and tenure/tenure-track will be commensurate with experience and qualifications.

For fullest consideration, applicants should submit a letter of intent, current curriculum vitae, and the name of three professional references by October 7, 2022.

(mew)

University of Arkansas at Fayetteville is Hiring

The University of Arkansas is seeking applications for a tenure track position teaching legal research and writing.  The university has made a strong commitment to both teaching and research by limiting the size of the incoming 1L class to keep classes small, and supporting faculty through generous travel support and summer research grants. 

 

Hat tip to Ann Killen.

 

(mew)

 

 

 

Villanova is Hiring

Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law is seeking to hire two full-time faculty positions, one to teach in our 2L transactional legal writing course and the other to teach in our 1L legal writing course or in both courses, beginning in the 2023-2024 academic year.  The positions offer competitive salaries and may lead to successive long-term contracts of five years.  

Legal writing faculty are responsible for teaching two sections per semester.  Our year-long 1L legal writing course focuses on analysis and objective writing in the fall and persuasive writing in the spring.  In our 2L legal writing course, students choose to participate in the litigation or transactional track.  The litigation track focuses on appellate brief writing and the transactional track enables students to develop skills to allow them to represent clients who want to accomplish a goal other than winning a dispute in court.  In addition to teaching, Villanova Law legal writing faculty provide service to the Law School, University, profession, and community and are a vital part of the Villanova Law community.  They also have partial voting rights and serve on law school committees and in leadership positions.  Legal writing faculty are not required to engage in scholarship, but those who do receive support.

Inquiries by interested applicants should be sent directly to Professor Todd Aagaard, Chair of the Appointments Committee, [email protected].

Hat tip to Heather D. Baum

(mew)