Legal Writing Prof Blog

Website Disclaimers and Privacy Policies

The Law Practice Tips Blog has a useful post on using (and updating) website disclaimers and privacy policies. The post has links to articles with writing tips and sample forms. Have a look by clicking here.

Hat tip to Michael Goldblatt.

(mew)

Daily Writing Tips

The website Daily Writing Tips publishes new articles daily on grammar, punctuation, spelling, usage, and vocabulary. Click here to have a look.

Hat tip to Michael Goldblatt.

(mew)

New Website Collects Information on Law Award Programs

A new website provides a fairly comprehensive listing of award programs for the legal profession.  The site is intended to encourage more lawyers and law firms to participate in the various award programs and to encourage even greater perfection in the practice of law. Through the new website, lawyers can match skills and accomplishments with the awards that might be available.

The "Featured Award of the Month" right now is The Burton Awards, a non-profit program founded by the Burton Foundation, rewarding excellence in the legal profession. The Burton Awards recognizes major achievements in law, ranging from literary awards to the greatest reform in law, from regulatory excellence to publishing awards, and from recognition for public service to public interest.  Regular readers of this Legal Writing Prof Blog know that the Burton Awards are given at the gala event held at the Library of Congress.  (The last award presentation even included a performance by Bernadette Peters!)

Other legal writing awards on the website include the Scribes Award (given by Scribes - The American Society of Legal Writers), the Thomas Blackwell Award (given jointly by the Association of Legal Writing Directors and the Legal Writing Institute), and the ClearMark Awards given by the Center for Plain Language.

The new website features several dozen programs in fourteen categories, including: civil rights, education, e-lawyering, environmental, family law, general, legal writing, legal aid, advocacy, marketing, media, pro bono, and women in law. The site is organized by profit or non-profit awards, features a program of the month, and offers advertising opportunities for programs, logo services, and in-depth descriptions.

Click here to visit the Law Award Programs website.

Hat tip to Michelle Rayzman

(mew)

Newsletter for the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research

Here's a reminder that you can find past issues of the Section Newsletter for the Association of American Law Schools Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research by visiting the section's webpage on the AALS website.  Click here for a direct link to that page, You can always access that page by going to the main page for the AALS (ww.aals.org) and then clicking on "Services" and then "Sections."  You will find all of the AALS Sections listed there.

At the top of the page for the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research, there are links to section newsletters from 2006, 2007, and 2008, as well as our most recent issue from Spring 2009.   You can also click here to read the most recent AALS Section Newsletter.

I've started working on the Fall 2009 issue of the Section Newsletter and would welcome your announcements, articles, and other contributions.  You can email them to me at legalwritingprof [at] gmail.com.

Mark E. Wojcik, Secretary, AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research

Hillary Burgess: Dude, Check it Out!

Hillary Burgess (pictured at left) has a guest post on the Law School Academic Support Blog on the subject of what to think when law professors say "dude!"  Legal writing folk mentioned in her post include Traci McGaugh and James Dimitri (pictured at right). Click here to read Hillary's post.

As a matter of record, we have our own in-house dude here on the Legal Writing Prof Blog.

We also extend our congratulations and good wishes to the Law School Academic Support Blog for recently having its landmark 150,000th visitor!

 (mew)