From the ChairI am writing this column in late October, looking out the window at a sunny late fall afternoon. As I think over what I want to say in this last column of the year, I am marveling at the fact that the leaves are still green, which is unusual for this late in the season in Chicago. The temperatures have de?initely turned colder as they do every year. But, unlike other years, we really haven’t had a snap of cold weather until just this week. The weather has been consistently warm all season, mostly in the upper 60s and lower 70s.
Before I sat down to write this column, I thought it would be too trite to start with the weather, but the more I looked out the window (writer’s block, anyone?), the more I came to see that the scene I was observing was much like my year as Chair of the Section of Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research—many constants and some changes.
Among the constants were the energy and dedication of the members of the Section Executive Committee: Kimberly Holst, Chair-‐Elect; Jennifer Romig, Secretary, Kathleen Elliot Vinson, Immediate Past-‐Chair; and Bob Brain, Executive Committee At-‐Large Member. Each of them had many other commitments, not the least of which was an always-‐present batch of papers to grade. But every time I called on them, they were ready to help and offer advice.
Another of the constants was the willingness of Section members to volunteer to do important committee work for the Section throughout the year. As is so true of LRW faculty, when I posted a call for volunteers last January, several dozen people stepped forward to serve on our various committees. The various Section activities at the Annual Meeting only happen because of the work of the committees. Although the committees and their members are too numerous to list in this column, a separate section in the newsletter recognizes each individual. For now, however, I do want to personally thank each volunteer for your dedication and hard work.
We have also seen some changes this year—changes beyond the annual transition in Section leadership, which takes place every year. One of the big changes was that the AALS announced in June that it would not be sponsoring a Poster Presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting. Although members of our section have done some awesome Poster Presentations at past AALS meetings, the committee of AALS administrators that decided to discontinue the presentations stated that it had concluded that Poster Presentations were not part of the culture of law faculty meetings in the same way that they are in other academic disciplines, such as the sciences and social sciences.
Another new item is that the Section Executive Committee approved a proposal from the Sub-‐Committee on Future Programming for an occasional “New Voices” panel at future meetings. The “New Voices” panel offers an
SECTION NEWSLETTER FALL 2013
Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research
TABLE OF CONTENTSTABLE OF
CONTENTS
SECTION AWARD:
JAN LEVINE3
ANNUAL MEETING
DANCE CARD4
NEW VOICES PROPOSAL 4
SECTION PROGRAMS 5
AALS WORKSHOP FOR
NEW LRW TEACHERS6
NEW YEAR’S
RESOLUTIONS7
INDIVIDUAL
ANNOUNCEMENTS14
PRESENTATIONS 16
PUBLICATIONS 23
PROGRAM
ANNOUNCEMENTS27
CONFERENCE
ANNOUNCEMENTS29
SPOTLIGHT ON
RETIREMENTS30
ADDITIONAL SESSIONS
AT AALS 201430
AALS SECTION
COMMITTEES31
Chair’s Column continues on page 2
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SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
Chair’s Column, continued
opportunity for junior LWR scholars to present their work at the AALS. It is a little different than the LWI’s Scholarship Workshops in that the AALS is a forum where members from all disciplines in the academy are present and thus the AALS offers an opportunity for a much bigger and more diverse audience to hear about the exciting research in the LRW ?ield. Whether any given year’s meeting will include a “New Voices” panel is up to the discretion of future Section leaders. For example, if the Section participates in a jointly sponsored program with one or more other sections, AALS rules prohibit the Section from offering a second program. However, approval of the proposal gives the Section an opportunity to add new and innovative programming to complement the Section’s other activities at the Annual Meeting.
This newsletter will be published several weeks before the 2014 Annual Meeting so I want to end by sharing with you some exciting news about the meeting. First, I am delighted to announce that the Section has chosen Jan Levine, Professor and Director of the LRW Program at Duquesne University School of Law as the recipient of the Section Award. If I tried to list all the reasons that Jan is the ideal recipient of this Award, it would take far more space than the space allocated to this column. Suf?ice it to say that there are few people who have labored more sel?lessly and tirelessly than Jan to improve the status of the Legal Writing profession and the status and salaries of Legal Writing faculty members. Please join me in congratulating Jan on this much-‐deserved recognition. I truly hope you will be able to join us in New York at our Section lunch and Section programs to honor and celebrate Jan.
This year’s meeting, as mentioned, is in New York, running from January 2, 2014 through January 5, 2014. We will bracket the meeting, since the AALS has scheduled our Section’s programs for the ?irst slot on the schedule and the last slot on the schedule. In keeping with the AALS desire to encourage cross-‐fertilization among disciplines at the Meeting, our programs are on topics that are at the heart of what we do in our LRW teaching but also broad enough that they should be of interest to members of many other sections. The rest of the newsletter has more detailed descriptions of our programming but here is a quick preview of the topics and dates:
• Friday January 3, 8:30 am – 10:15 am: “Reading Comprehension in the Age of Twitter: Teaching Law Students to Read for Meaning and Materiality”
• Short Business meeting after Jan. 3 program
• Friday January 3: 12:15 pm – 1:30 pm: Section Lunch and Presentation of Section Award to Jan Levine
• Sunday January 5: 2:00 pm – 3:45 pm: “Erasing Boundaries: Inter-‐School Collaboration and Its Pedagogical Opportunities”
The agenda for the Section Business meeting is as follows:
(1) Approval of Slate for next year:
• Chair: Kimberly Holst, Arizona State University, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law• Chair-‐Elect: Jennifer Murphy Romig, Emory
University School of Law• Secretary: Robert Brain, Loyola Law School, Los
Angeles• Immediate Past Chair: Judy Rosenbaum,
Northwestern University School of Law• Executive Committee Members-‐At-‐Large:
Sabrina DeFabritiis, Suffolk University Law School, & Mary Bowman, Seattle University School of Law (2) Announcement of Award Winner(3) Announcement of Second Program(4) Announcement of Outreach Programming(5) Announcement of New Voices(6) Thanks to all volunteers and attendees
I began this year as chair with enthusiasm and with appreciation of the Section and its many endeavors, and I depart with new insights and deep gratitude. It has been a real honor and joy to have had the opportunity to serve as Section Chair this past year. I thank everyone for your service and for reminding me yet again what a wonderful community we have in our ?ield. As I pass the baton to Kimberly Holst, who will take over as Section Chair at the end of the January meeting, I want to add a personal thank you to Kim for her advice, support and assistance this past year. I know she will be an outstanding leader in the coming year.
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2014 shall be deemed “The Year of Jan Levine.” The Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research has voted to award the 2014 Section Award to Jan Levine, Associate Professor & Director of the LRW Program at Duquesne University School of Law. The Section will publicly announce the award recipient at the Friday January 3 and Sunday January 5 Section Programs. The formal presentation of the Award will take place at the Section Luncheon on Friday, January 3.
The nominating materials for Professor Levine chronicle the arc of his career and the importance of his contributions to legal writing doctrine, legal writing pedagogy, and the legal writing community. Here is a preview of the celebration of Professor Jan Levine to follow at the Section Luncheon.
For more than a quarter of a century now Professor Levine has been a “visionary” in the LRW ?ield. The original pioneers of this ?ield, many of whom have been recognized by this Section include Mary Lawrence, Marjorie Rombauer, Laurel Oates, Susan Brody, Helene Shapo, Richard Neumann, Jill Rams?ield, Chris Rideout, and Ralph Brill. Jan, however, spearheaded the next wave of leaders and advocates for the profession.
As nominator Professor Sue Liemer wrote, Professor Levine's presentations, service, and scholarship “have helped an entire generation of legal writing professors innovate and professionalize.”
Moreover, he has tirelessly articulated the link between status issues and the legal writing education that students receive. Thanks to Jan’s efforts, legal writing is
now “one of the key factors that prospective students consider in choosing a school,” thus garnering more attention and resources for legal writing programs and professors from law school administrations as well. His efforts on behalf of legal writing faculty and legal writing as a profession have had nationwide impact. The nominating materials consistently noted Professor Levine’s impact on the individual careers of numerous legal writing professors. He has courageously championed experimentation, innovations and productive
discourse among legal writing faculty.
These excerpted notes from Professor Levine’s nominating materials are just a small sample of his many accomplishments, to be heralded in more depth at the Section Luncheon.
The Section is proud to present the 2014 Award of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research to Jan Levine. As nominator Professor Suzanne Rowe wrote, “[h]is commitment and contributions to our community are overwhelming. We simply would not be where we are without him.”
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
Celebrating Section Award Winner Jan Levine
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In April of 2012, Kathleen Vinson, then Chair of the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning and Research (“LWRR”), created a “Future Programming” sub-‐committee of the AALS LWRR section. This sub-‐committee was created in response to a proposal for a panel on “New Voices in Legal Writing, Reasoning and Research” made to the LWRR Program Committee by the Legal Writing Institute Committee on Scholarship Development and Outreach.
The task of the sub-‐committee was to explore the possibility and feasibility of a recurring New Voices panel for junior LWRR scholars to present their work at the AALS. Kathryn M. Stanchi of Temple University chaired the sub-‐committee. Other members included Mary Bowman of Seattle University School of Law, Thomas Burch of Florida State University College of Law, and Anna Hemingway of Widener Law. Judy Rosenbaum, then Chair-‐Elect of the Section, was the Executive Committee Liaison.
The report submitted by the sub-‐committee noted that several other AALS Sections had adopted policies to allocate program slots at the AALS Annual Meeting to panels where newer members in a substantive ?ield could present could present papers on their research.
Newer scholars would thus have a forum for showcasing their work to the larger academic community. In return the newer scholars would have a chance to receive mentoring and feedback from the LRW community and beyond. Additionally, a New Voices Panel would allow the Section to reach out to other members of the academy and foster greater understanding of our ?ield, ideally encouraging richer relationships between the LWRR Section and other AALS sections.
The approval of the proposal encourages the Section to offer a New Voices panel from time to time, generally as a second program on the schedule. However, approval does not obligate the Section to offer a New Voices panel in any given year, because in some situations, such as programs jointly sponsored with other sections, AALS internal rules prohibit sections from offering more than one program. Nonetheless the Executive Committee believed that over the long term both the Section and the LRW community would bene?it increased mentoring opportunities for junior scholars and that the scholars themselves would bene?it from having an additional venue for highlighting their work.
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
ANNUAL MEETING “DANCE CARD”8:30-10:15 a.m., Friday, January 3: “Reading Comprehension in the Age of Twitter: Teaching Law Students to Read for Meaning and Materiality”
10:15 a.m., Friday, January 3, following the program:Section Business Meeting
12:15-1:30 p.m., Friday, January 3: Section Luncheon and Awards
8 p.m., Friday, January 3:Blackwell/Golden Pen Reception at the Marriott Marquis celebrating Jan Levine
2:00-3:45 p.m. Sunday, January 5: “Erasing Boundaries: Inter-School Collaboration and Its Pedagogical Opportunities”
Detailed previews can be found on page 5. More programs of interest are listed on page 29.
Locations to be announced in final AALS program and on the website at www.aals.org.
Section Approves Proposal for “New Voices”
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PREVIEW OF ANNUAL MEETING PROGRAMS
SECTION OF LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
8:30-10:15 a.m., Friday, Jan. 3:
“Reading Comprehension in the Age of Twitter: Teaching Law Students to Read for Meaning and Materiality”
Co-moderator Professor Heidi Brown (New York Law School): "We look forward to an interactive and energetic morning session in which audience participants will use 'think-aloud' techniques to take note of the meta-cognitive processes and strategies we as 'expert readers' use when reading legal documents for the first time. Our goal for this presentation is that, collectively, we can translate these observations into practical classroom strategies, to get our 'novice reader' students energized about breaking complex legal documents down into understandable parts.”
Co-moderator Professor Jodi Balsam (New York Law School): “As professors, we probably take our own reading comprehension skills for granted, since we have been applying those skills for so long. Our AALS presentation, and especially the interactive exercise, will help all of us assess how to approach this skill with fresh eyes, and ultimately enhance the reading skills of our multi-tasking digital-age students."
Speakers: Leah M. Christensen (Thomas Jefferson); David Nadvorney (City University of New York); Laurel C. Oates, (Seattle University)
2:00-3:45 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 5:
“Erasing Boundaries: Inter-School Collaboration and Its Pedagogical Opportunities”
Legal writing programs rely on simulated experiential learning to teach their students about oral and written communication. The more realistic these simulations are, the more engaged the students can become with the problem, but the illusion of reality is shattered when a student encounters an opposing lawyer, or a witness, in the cafeteria lunch line. This presentation suggests that technology opens up new possibilities for law schools by allowing students from different schools to participate in complex simulations that can, if carefully prepared, teach important lessons about lawyering skills, behavior, and the construction of a professional identity.
Ian Gallacher (Syracuse) will speak on the role of legal writing programs. Robin A. Boyle (St. Johns) will speak on the importance of experiential learning. Amy R. Stein (Hofstra) will use an intensive skills course she has created as an example of how these simulations might work. David Thomson (Denver) will moderate the presentations, comment on them, and lead a group discussion on the possibilities, and potential problems, of inter-school collaboration.
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Workshop for Beginning Legal Writing Teachersby Bob Brain
It is hard to improve on something that everyone raves about, but Jason Palmer (Stetson), who directed the Workshop for Beginning Legal Writing Law School Teachers, did it this past summer. The Workshop was originally developed by Dan Barnett (Lewis & Clark) as a practical seminar where newer legal writing professors could get advice from more experienced colleagues in commenting on student papers and leading effective student conferences. One of the staples of the Workshop is the session for “triage in the trenches,” as Craig T. Smith (North Carolina) puts it-‐-‐namely, commenting on sample memos marked by ?irst-‐year students’ most common errors, then breaking into small groups to discuss effective strategies for the comments.
In designing this year’s session, Professor Palmer knew he had to keep the essence of the Workshop, but wanted to expand its scope. “Given how the legal writing ?ield has grown over the years, I wanted to include sessions on
scholarship and the pedagogy of legal writing,” he said. Accordingly, the participants were treated to a conference that included Linda Berger (UNLV), Ken Chestek (Wyoming) and Kirsten Davis (Stetson), who led a session on effective teaching; and Michael Higdon (Tennessee), Suzanne Rowe (Oregon) and Craig Smith, who spoke about the role of scholarship in the legal writing community, and how to accomplish it. Dan Barnett led the critiquing session and Sherri Keene (Maryland), Rosario Lozada Schrier (Florida International) and Amy Sloan (Baltimore) discussed the best approaches to communicate critiques to students.
The evolution of legal writing ?ield was the topic of Eric Easton’s (Baltimore) plenary talk. Eric reminisced about a new professor workshop 20 years ago, where the AALS had arranged a wine and cheese reception at the end of the weekend. Each cocktail table held a sign advertising its subject matter, such as “Contracts” or “Torts.” Eric went to the table marked “Legal Research & Writing,” but no one else showed up-‐-‐not because there were no other beginning legal writing professors at the conference, but because no one wanted to “own up” to teaching legal writing. Eric was delighted to see how far the profession has come as he welcomed the thirty or so legal writing professors attending the Workshop.
The Workshop preceded the general AALS Workshop for New Law Teachers. Participants who stayed for the general workshop were treated to additional breakout sessions on legal writing, led by Professor Palmer. As Professor Rowe explained, “It was stimulating for all writing faculty who were there, at whatever experience level.” Maureen Johnson (Loyola, Los Angeles) one of this year’s participants, echoed the hundreds of new teachers who have praised the Workshop in the past: “I particularly enjoyed the portion of the conference that focused on teaching ?irst-‐year students. It really brought home the importance of a law school's plan for ensuring that students truly learn the fundamental of legal writing and analysis. I made numerous contacts with both the moderators and other newbie professors and look forward to seeing everyone at other conferences.”
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Resolving to Prioritize
by Megan McAlpinUniversity of Oregon
I love New Year’s
Resolutions. In fact, I love
New Year’s Resolutions so much that I refuse to limit
them to New Year’s Day. The problem is that I make
resolutions all year long,
sometimes on a daily basis. My resolution strategy: resolve myself into perfection.
But resolving to be perfect in all things is ridiculous for at least two reasons. First, as I blindly
grope towards perfection in all things, I’m ignoring
the fact that some things are just more important than others. Second, because perfection is a completely
unattainable goal, I find myself constantly berating myself for falling short.
So this year, my New Year’s Resolution is to
prioritize. Once I set that list of priorities, on January 1, only those things on the top of the priority list will
even come close to being perfect. Throughout the year, I will let the work I do be proof of my priorities.
And I will forgive myself for everything that’s left
undone or done imperfectly. In fact, I might just reward myself for things left undone because it will
mean that I had my priorities in order.
Resolutely Retro
by Sue LiemerSouthern Illinois Law School
I really never set out to be less plugged into the electronic world than the average American with a professional career. My less connected status just evolved, when I was an untenured legal writing professor saving for two children’s college educations. And now I have arrived at 2014 without an I-phone, tablet, or home Internet access. I do not have a Facebook page, do not tweet, and do not shop on-line. Now that I find myself in this unplugged position, I resolve to remain here, to consciously cultivate the mental environment that this resolution allows, and to enjoy its benefits.
Neuroscience is now able to measure the effects on the brain of reading written material as presented on-line. The research results do not bode well for either the developing brains of the young or the aging brains of middle-aged law professors. Shallow thinking is surreptitiously replacing deep thinking in many heads. Less cutting-edge science also reports the damaging effects on the hearing of people who frequently receive sound via ear buds and headphones. The overall health effects of long hours spent sitting in front of screens are also negative. And so I resolve to continue reading hard copy books, grading hard copy papers, and looking my colleagues in the eye during meetings.
Now that I can financially afford to connect to the world on-line 24/7, I simply do not want to. Of course I have to plug in while at the office. But at home and away, I value far more the ability to be mindfully present in and interacting with the physical world around me.
OUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONSInspired by “The 300-Word Challenge” in William Zinsser’s The Writer Who Stayed
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
“I believe that anything can be cut to 300 words.”
-William Zinsser
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Representing Skills by
Representing Pro Bono
By Brad Desnoyer
University of Missouri School of Law
Practice-Ready. Skills Training. Clinic Opportunities. We hear these
phrases constantly, like the tremors of a jackhammer tearing up an old street. I fear, however, that these phrases are transitioning from a vital wake-up call to passive white noise.
Sometimes I feel like law schools are dot.com start-ups throwing around the word “synergy.” We sit around and cheer at our new words, and then we continue to sit, patting ourselves on the back for having updated our vocabulary. And then we learn another phrase: “bubble burst.”
I do not have any novel solutions. All I have is my resolution: working with students in pro bono settings.
Like I said, it is not the most original idea; certainly we have clinics and existing pro bono opportunities. But I want to push further. I want to be part of a law school that continually encourages working outside of the classroom, where the faculty redefines “service”—where skills are commonplace.
Last month I became the faculty advisor to a legal fraternity. I remember being a member of the same fraternity when I was in school. It was dedicated to hosting happy hours and sharing outlines. But we are now dedicating ourselves to something better: pro bono skills. Every month we will travel 30 miles to our state’s capital and work in the legal care offices of The Samaritan Center—which offers food, medical care, and more to our area’s neediest citizens.
If every professor worked with our students, doing just a few pro bono hours a month, the culture and learning of our schools would transform. We would be demonstrating theory in practice. We would be serving our clients and our community.
We would be teaching. And it wouldn’t be just noise.
My New Year’s
Resolution
by Christine Pedigo
Bartholomew
SUNY Buffalo School of Law
This year, I
want to stress
professionalism. It’s all too easy to lambast new students’ lack of
professionalism by bemoaning missed deadlines or lamenting the frustrating “dear prof” eleventh hour
excuse emails. Of course, adding opportunities to
develop professionalism takes time away from competing pedagogical demands. And admittedly,
the patience necessary to nurture and help develop these skills hardly comes naturally (at least to me).
But this year, my goal is to remember
professionalism is just another lawyering skill, like many others. Students often arrive at law school with
latent abilities to be highly professional: even the basic “please” and “thank you” habit instilled by
parents set the stage. Yet somehow these skills get
buried over time, replaced instead by different demands and desires.
My New Year’s resolution is to work with students to revivify these basic skills and further
develop them. I want students to understand how
written communication and professionalism are synergistic—and conversely, to understand how
strong analysis unprofessionally expressed hinders more than guides. Students who understand what
professionalism means and its resulting benefits to
the profession, their colleagues, and themselves are much closer to success.
OUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
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9
Resolve to Break Down
Institutional Barriers
Through Distance Learning
by Amy R. SteinHofstra University
The rapid changes occurring in in both legal
education and technology provide fascinating
collaborative opportunities
between law schools. I have become increasingly passionate about this topic as I work with my co-
presenters (Robin Boyle, Ian Gallacher and David Thomson) to develop our upcoming AALS
presentation, “Erasing Boundaries: Inter-School
Collaboration and Its Pedagogical Opportunities.” We have been examining ways in which schools
can work together to provide a richer, more experiential first year Legal Writing experience – for
example professors at two different schools could use
the same fact pattern and hold joint classes. Students gaining insight from more than one teacher is akin to
law practice and the various perspectives partners and clients might have about a legal question. An oral
argument against a student from another school is
much more representative of real law practice than arguing against a friend from your section.
The benefits of these collaborations go well beyond the first year- offering skills courses that
include students at other schools and perhaps even in
other countries would expose them to exciting and different ideas outside of the bubble of their own
institutions. I recently created an intensive skills course, “Drafting and Arguing the Summary
Judgment Motion.” The course will initially be a
hybrid of face-to-face and online learning, with an eye towards becoming fully online on the future. As
we have worked on this presentation for AALS, I
realize that this course and others like it provide the
perfect vehicle for tweaking existing classes to fit this learning model. Students at another school could be
partnered with Hofstra students for purposes of
drafting; students at both institutions could be paired for oral arguments.
These opportunities for co-learning between schools has reinvigorated my teaching and
heightened my desire to use technology to seek out
these opportunities.
Back to Kindergarten
by Jason P. Potter
University of Massachusetts School of Law
A growing body of research tells us that to be
effective teachers, we must focus on the individual
learning profiles of our
students. Curricula must be responsive and adaptable. As
legal educators, we need to do more to empower our students. We must rethink the one-size-fits-all
pedagogical approach that rewards product rather
than growth. In the New Year, I plan to do more to pinpoint
my students’ learning styles, to present them with tailored learning options and challenges, and to
provide meaningful assessments of their individual
progress. There is much to learn from primary school educators about empowering students through
responsive, differentiated teaching. This year, I’m going back to kindergarten.
OUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
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Teaching, One Stitch at a Timeby Heather MelnikerTouro Law Center
I recently took a knitting class with my sister-‐in-‐law. While she loves all sorts of crafts and is quite talented, I am not.
I thought it would be nice to have some quality time together, however, so I agreed to join her. My experience was humbling, and my New Year’s resolution is to never forget how it felt to be the weakest student in the class.
We began with simple stitches. I thought I understood and followed the teacher’s directions, but when she came around to view everyone’s work, she said my stitches were uneven. She tried to explain, but I continued to have dif?iculty translating her directions into an acceptable work product.
As the stitches became more complex, the other students easily caught on, and I fell more and more behind. I was self-‐conscious and became reluctant to ask questions. I heard the teacher lavish praise on the others, but she quickly gave up on me. She stopped trying to explain when she passed my seat, and my embarrassment and stress increased. Throughout the six-‐week course, I remained the weakest student in the class. While I left the class knowing more than I did when I started, the humiliation of not being able to keep up left me feeling like a failure.
I have always tried to be sensitive to all my students’ needs, but my knitting experience made me keenly aware that all my explanations and individualized attention will not always be enough to magically transform the weaker students into strong students. However, those weakest students, those with the uneven stitches, still deserve my continued best efforts to help them. I won’t give up on them; I’ve been there and it’s not fun.
My New Year’s Resolution, or What I Learned from a Law School Dropoutby Lindsey P. GustafsonUALR William H. Bowen School of Law
The dropout was my husband, and he appeared in
most ways to be the ideal law student: He is bright and experienced, he knew how he would use a law degree, and he had listened to me for twenty years. When he started, I was eager to capitalize on having a 1L in my home. I watched him stealthily and began to take notes in a document titled “What I Learned from my 1L Husband.” But all of my notes about the ordering of concepts, the effectiveness of teaching methods, and the interface of skills and doctrine eventually coalesced into one theme: time. Because my husband couldn’t devote the time required to meet all the demands placed on him, he dropped out.
My husband had time pressures other law students don’t have (me, for one), but my New Year’s Resolution is to consider how busy to make my students to ensure optimal learning. While I carefully construct my syllabi to give my students as much practice and assessment as possible, I realized I did not spend much time thoughtfully estimating how long each assignment would take an average student, or how much of my students’ total semester my course should require. I may be giving them too much of a good thing.
And even when I do estimate, apparently I’m not very good at it. This semester my 2L students reported that weekly assignments I had designed to take two hours were taking every student more than twice that, with several students taking closer to ten. With that feedback, I cut the length of the assignments in half.
So I’m resolved: Keeping in mind all they need to learn, I will respect my students’ time.
OUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
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New Year’s Resolution: Be Explicit! by Jodi S. Balsam New York Law School
Be explicit! Be, be explicit! Yes, it sounds like a cheerleader’s refrain. And I use it to cheer myself on as I
prepare for each class and student meeting. Here’s what it means: Do more in terms of directly making connections for my students between their current assignment and what they have learned so far in my class, prior coursework, and their life and work experience.
Law professors often bemoan that our students don’t seem to engage in transfer of learning. Especially in skills courses and clinics, we observe that with every change in context, our students struggle to recognize the prior skills and knowledge they have accumulated and how to apply them to new settings and assignments. One simple method for encouraging our students to transfer their learning is to cue up the issue for them. In speci?ic and unambiguous terms, tell them: “You’ve done something like this before, and here’s how it worked. Now you are back on similar terrain, and you need to call up those skills and do it again.”
To continue the sports metaphor: don’t hide the ball. Spend the time at the outset of a new assignment identifying prior relevant learning experiences, and analogizing and mapping those experiences to the new situation. Cognitive science tells us that one of the best ways to improve transfer of learning is to make it more conscious. My new year’s resolution is to model—explicitly—that process for my students in the classroom. It’s a winning strategy for transferring learning to the next assignment, and ultimately into their law practice.
New Year’s Resolution: My Grading Goalsby Olympia DuhartNova Southeastern University
I will grade the papers as soon as I get them. I will not stack them neatly on my desk and reshuf?le them as needed. I will not sort through them to make sure – for the fourth time in a row – they are in alphabetical order and all present. I will not move them from the desk, to my rolly-‐bag, to the backseat of my car and then to my dining room table with high hopes and no work product to show.
I will not count out ?ive or ten at a time and drag those special few with me on my errand days to the doctor, the hairstylist and my son’s orthodontist. I will not recount them fueled by fantasies that they have somehow disappeared or graded themselves. I will not avoid making eye contact with them. I will not pack them in my carry-‐on bag and take them with me to a conference in a far-‐away city. I will not cart them across town to a CLE. I will not take them with me on a mini-‐family vacation as I sit in the passenger seat and try to ignore the distractions in my car.
I will not jam a few in my tote when I go to visit my mother for Sunday dinner. I will not sneak a peek at a few during faculty meetings. I will not use them to motivate me to ?inally clean my closet, organize my bookshelf and learn how to bake bread. I will not beat myself up too much because I know how hard I work for my students. I will not forget that quality and speed are equally important in this enterprise.
I will grade the papers as soon as I get them. (Or at least within a reasonable time-‐frame.)
OUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
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Feedback through Technologyby Michelle Zakarin Touro Law School
As my new year of teaching legal writing began, assignments trickled in almost immediately. This year, I decided to edit my students’ work from my computer using Microsoft
Word. Microsoft Word has a “Review” tab allowing users to comment. The comments appear neatly on the side of the paper. Previously, my edits were done by hand. It was easy for me to remain organized this way. I required students to submit a hard copy and then I had a stack of papers to read. As I read each one, I placed it in a new pile and once I completed the editing, I had a nice pile to hand back to my students in class.
My desire to try a new editing process stemmed from students who claimed they could not always read my handwriting and understand my abbreviations or what I meant by them. A tremendous part of what I teach in legal writing is the importance of clarity, so if my comments were unclear, this was irony at its best. I needed a new approach.
I am a lover of all types of technology, especially the computer, so editing using a computer made sense to me. Once I began the computer-‐editing, I immediately noticed that I was able to explain all of my revisions with ease. Microsoft Word kept my comments clear and organized, and I did not need to use abbreviations. Also, I no longer faced the challenge of running out of space on a page and using arrows to indicate a new area to continue the comments. My students have provided unsolicited appreciation and have even stated that they look forward to learning from more of my comments.
Channeling Amy Sloan by Kristen K. TiscioneGeorgetown University Law Center
My New Year’s resolution is to do a better job teaching how to formulate research strategies and conduct effective online research. I vow to demonstrate, using state-‐of-‐the-‐art technology, multiple pathways to ?inding primary and secondary source material on WestlawNext, Lexis Advance, Bloomberg Law, and a healthy smattering of low-‐cost and free online sources, both private and public, while remaining grounded in the print resources from whence they came. I shall teach my students how to compose effective keyword, terms and connectors, and conceptual searches, while being mindful of the high costs of online research and different data providers’ pricing policies. Finally, I shall accomplish these goals without any increase in teaching hours.
What? Too much? Ahem . . . My new New Year’s resolution is to learn
how to turn the LCD projector in my classroom on and off and to ?ind multiple pathways to primary and secondary source material on WestlawNext, Lexis Advance, Bloomberg Law, and a healthy smattering of low-‐cost and free online sources, both private and public, while somewhat letting go of the print resources from whence they came. I shall learn how to compose effective keyword, terms and connectors, and conceptual searches and try mightily to understand the different data providers’ pricing policies. Finally, I shall accomplish these goals without any increase in working hours.
What? Still too much?Okay, okay. My ?inal New Year’s resolution is to
stop using Westlaw “Classic” and stop putting terms and connectors searches into the main search box of WestlawNext.
OUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
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Bring Em On!by Rachel H. SmithUniversity of Miami School of Law
More em dashes. That is my teaching resolution.
I am tired of reading student writing that is boring. I am tired of reading student writing that has no personality.
I want to do more to inspire my students to write beautifully. I would love for at least a few of my students’ memos, letters, motions, and briefs to be interesting to read—to have character and style. Look at that em dash in the last sentence. Isn’t it lovely?
Em dashes aren’t the only answer, but they seem like a good place to start. As a new legal writing teacher, I was overwhelmed by the grammar and punctuation mistakes that seemed to scream at me from my students’ papers. So, I panicked. I taught my students to write conservatively. I urged them to avoid semicolons, parentheses, and—yes—em dashes, in the hope that they would write clean papers without a lot of mistakes.
What they wrote instead were boring papers with mundane mistakes. My lockdown approach only made them afraid to experiment and sentenced me to read student papers lacking verve and voice.
So I am unleashing the em dash. I am going to encourage my students to try it. I am going to offer examples, especially from Justice Elena Kagan, that show how em dashes spruce up sentences and catch the reader’s attention.
I have a healthy fear that the rampant use of em dashes may make my students’ papers read like so many blog posts. But maybe, by focusing on the em dash, I can help my students to see that legal writing doesn’t have to be so dry. And maybe—just maybe—this new freedom will motivate my students to write something glorious.
“I will speak up.”by Elizabeth Ruiz FrostUniversity of Oregon School of Law
This year, I resolve to speak up. I will recognize that I have valuable ideas to contribute, whether in my scholarship, in my service on committees, or in discussions with my faculty colleagues.
In the past, I have been reluctant to add my perspective. When I started teaching at the University of Oregon, I was completely new to academia, new to the legal writing discipline, and new to the faculty, so I thought, what could I add? In the following years, I was relatively new to academia, the discipline, and the faculty, so I still thought, what could I add?
Now in my fourth year, I need to realize there will always be people who are senior to me and more expert than me, but that doesn’t mean my ideas aren’t worth exploring and discussing. I have new approaches and different insights; I bring a unique voice to the conversation. So this year I will stop telling myself that I have nothing to add. I will speak up.
OUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
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Jodi Balsam (New York Law School) received a 2013 LexisNexis Scholarship Grant, awarded by the Legal Writing Institute and Association of Legal Writing Directors, for her developing article, “Local Rulemaking as a Form of Resistance: When Federal Appellate Local Rules Challenge National Prerogatives.”
Barbara Blumenfeld (University of New Mexico School of Law) retired from the University of New Mexico School of Law effective August 1, 2013. She served as director of the legal writing program there beginning in 1995 and was voted emeritus status upon her retirement. She began teaching legal writing at Wayne State University in 1985.
Bob Brain (Loyola Law School, Los Angeles) was promoted from Associate Clinical Professor to full Clinical Professor.
David Cadaret (University of Oregon School of Law) is a visiting professor at the University of Oregon this year.
Juli Campagna (Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University) was named Professor of the Year by the graduating class of 2013.
Gary Craig (Loyola Law School, Los Angeles) was voted Teacher of the Year by the graduating Class of 2013.
Cara Cunningham (University of Detroit Mercy School of Law) was the conference organizer for the Law and Legal Education in the Americas: Comparative Perspectives -‐ University of Detroit Mercy School of Law with the University of Windsor Faculty of Law (Ontario, Canada) and the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Monterrey, Mexico) in the summer of 2013.
Kirsten Davis (Stetson University College of Law) has been appointed Director of Stetson University College of Law's new Institute for the Advancement of Legal Communication.
Professor Olympia Duhart (Nova Southeastern University) is the new Co-‐President of the Society of American Law Teachers. She will serve with Professor Ruben Garcia of the University of Nevada-‐Las Vegas beginning January 2013.
Christina M. Frohock (University of Miami Law School) has an article, Military Justice as Justice: Fitting Confrontation Clause Jurisprudence into Military Commissions, forthcoming in the New England Law Review. In addition to teaching Legal Communication and Research Skills to 1L students, she created and teaches Legal Issues in Guantánamo as an upper-‐level writing course.
Dana Hill (Northwestern University Law School) was the faculty advisor for a comparative law course on Ethiopia, which included a two-‐week research trip to Addis Ababa, Awassa and Arba Minch. By interviewing local attorneys, judges, government and NGO workers, and academics, Dana’s students investigated the impact of Ethiopia’s commodity exchange on its coffee industry, the impact of large scale farming and dam projects on property rights of villagers, and a comparison Ethiopia’s tribal and civil law legal systems.
Kimberly Holst (Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University) has been granted continuing status and promoted to Clinical Professor.
In July and August 2013, Professor Tonya Kowalski (Washburn University College of Law) traveled to Pune, India to teach legal analysis and mooting skills to entering LLB students at Symbiosis University Law School. Symbiosis is a top-‐ranked private law school in India. As part of their Jurisprudence and Torts classes, approximately 230 ?irst-‐year LLB students took a four-‐day mini-‐course in legal writing, wrote a brief (in Commonwealth countries, a “memorial”), and gave oral arguments—all this in just their ?irst few weeks of law school, and at only 17 or 18 years of age. Washburn and Symbiosis plan to expand their collaborative relationship.
MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Individual
Announcements
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Amy Langenfeld (Sandra O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University) is pleased to join Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD as an associate editor.
Jan M. Levine (Duquesne University School of Law) was given the Thomas F. Blackwell Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Legal Writing (2013). This distinguished award is presented annually by the Association of Legal Writing Directors and the Legal Writing Institute to a person “who has made an outstanding contribution to improve the ?ield of Legal Writing by demonstrating an ability to nurture and motivate students to excellence, a willingness to help other legal writing educators improve their teaching skills or their legal writing programs, and an ability to create and integrate new ideas for teaching and motivating legal writing educators and students.”
Lance Long (Stetson University College of Law) was awarded tenure and promoted to Professor of Legal Skills.
Patrick J. Long (SUNY Buffalo) was named Professor of the Year by the SUNY Buffalo Class of 2013.
Megan McAlpin (University of Oregon School of Law) will be the acting director of the Legal Research and Writing Program during the spring semester.
Professors Tom Noble and Patricia C. Perkins (Elon University School of Law) were awarded three-‐year contracts. Professor Perkins's pro bono work with death row inmates in North Carolina is featured in the law school's annual report.
Jason Palmer (Stetson University College of Law) was awarded tenure.
Sue Provenzano (Northwestern University Law School) has been promoted to the rank of Professor of Practice.
Mary Ann Robinson (Villanova University School of Law) has joined Villanova Law School's faculty as an Associate Professor of Legal Writing. Mary Ann is developing and teaching a new legal writing course focusing on transactional practice. This new course is part of Villanova's redesigned legal writing program, which allows second-‐year students to choose which upper-‐level writing course to take. Mary Ann comes to Villanova from Widener University School of Law, where she taught for nine years.
Suzanne Rowe (University of Oregon School of Law) will be on sabbatical, spending most of her time in South America.
Wanda M. Temm (University of Missouri-‐Kansas City) was awarded the 2013 Provost's Award for Excellence in Teaching, a campus award granted to one faculty member.
Kathleen Elliott Vinson (Suffolk University Law School) was elected President of the Association of Legal Writing Directors.
Stephanie Vaughan (Stetson University College of Law) has been named Associate Director for the Center for Excellence in Advocacy.
Eric Voigt (Faulkner Law, Jones School of Law) has started a consulting business, R+W Legal Consultants, where he blogs on research and writing skills (www.rwlegalconsultants.com/blog). He also presents interactive CLE seminars on advanced legal research.
Catherine Wasson (Elon University School of Law), Associate Professor of Law and Director, Legal Method & Communication, was awarded tenure last spring.
Pam Wilkins (University of Detroit Mercy School of Law) was promoted to Associate Dean of Academic Affairs.
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PresentationsMary Garvey Algero, Warren E. Mouledoux,
Distinguished Professor of Law (Loyola University New Orleans College of Law), and JoAnne Sweeny (University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law) presented "Balancing Collaboration and Independence," at the 2013 Conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors, which was held at Marquette University College of Law in June 2013.
Robert Anderson (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) presented "Editing Triage" at the National Conference of State Legislators in October 2013. He also presented “How to Use a Flipped Classroom to Teach Legal Writing" at the Central States Legal Writing Conference in September 2013.
Debra Austin (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) presented:
• “Self-‐Directed Neuroplasticity: The Neuroscience of Cognitive Wellness” for the faculty of the U.S. Air Force Academy in November 2013.
• “Stress & Lawyering: Use Neural Self-‐Hacking to Develop a Plan for Cognitive Wellness” at the Rhone Brackett Inn of Court in October 2013.• “Self-‐Directed Neuroplasticity: The Neuroscience
of Cognitive Wellness” at the Kansas Judicial Center in September 2013.• “Stress and Cognition: The Neuroscience Behind
Stress, Memory & Learning at the Central States Legal Writing Conference in September 2013. • “Neural Self-‐Hacking: The Neuroscience of
Cognition and Brain Health” at the Implications of Tiger Parenting for Legal Education Conference in June 2013.• “Stress and Cognition: The Neuroscience Behind
Stress, Memory & Thinking” at the Rocky Mountain Regional Legal Writing Conference in March 2013.
Jodi Balsam (New York Law School) co-‐presented “Expanding Lawyering Skills: Out of the Courtroom and Into the Studio,” at the AALS Clinical Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico in May 2013. She will co-‐present at the AALS 2014 Annual Meeting on "Reading Comprehension in the Age of Twitter: Teaching Law Students to Read for Meaning and Materiality," a program sponsored by the Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research.
Lori Bannai (Seattle University School of Law) was part of a panel addressing “Inde?inite Detention without Due Process” at Seattle Town Hall. Her remarks commented on the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans and the Hedges v. Obama litigation which challenged the inde?inite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act.
Lori Bannai and Stephanie Wilson (Seattle University School of Law) jointly presented “Law Libraries and Advocacy: Using Special Collections to Tell the Story of the Japanese American Internment” at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference. Their presentation covered the law library’s exhibits about Fred T. Korematsu and Gordon Hirabayashi and how librarians provided extensive research to support the Seattle University Honorary Degree Program spearheaded by Lori and the Korematsu Center.
Deborah L. Borman (Northwestern University Law School) presented "Degrading Assessment: Rejecting Rubrics in Favor of Authentic Analysis," at the Western Regional Legal Writing Conference, Whittier School of Law, on August 9, 2013. She also presented "Integrating Professional Identity into the Writing Program," at the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning Conference, Washburn University School of Law, on June 9, 2013.
Deirdre Bowen (Seattle University School of Law) has been invited to present on a plenary panel about Critical Race Theory and Empirical Methodology at the West Coast Law & Society Retreat.
MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Deirdre Bowen's (Seattle University School of Law) DOMA blog for ACS was referenced in the SCOTUS blog news roundup. She also was quoted in an article by Lou Cannon, former Chief White House correspondent for the Washington Post, for a story about the Supreme Court’s Af?irmative Action ruling for the State Net Capitol Journal.
Katherine L. Caldwell (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) presented “Facing Deportation: Domestic and International Human Rights Advocacy in the U.S. and Latin America” at the U.S. Human Rights Network National Conference in December 2013 (with the University of Miami School of Law's Human Rights and Immigration Clinics and the Center for Constitutional Rights).
Charles Calleros (Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, ASU), presented “Everything Old is New Again, Maybe: How Should Programs Teach the Interof?ice Predictive Memo?,” a panel presentation with Kirsten Davis and Kristen Tiscione, at the ALWD Biennial Conference at Marquette University Law School on June 28, 2013.
Juli Campagna (Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University) presented “How to Jump Start a Legal Writing Class for International Students” at the Capital Area Legal Writing Conference hosted by the American University Washington College of Law in March 2013. She also presented “Improving Your Chances of Being Published in an American Law Review” to Colombian law professors at Rosary University in Bogota in July 2013.
John Campbell (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) presented “Creative Appellate Practice” at the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis Bench and Bar in May 2013. He also presented “Putting the Trust in Trustees” at the University of Albany Law School Sharing Scholarship, Building Teachers Roundtable in February 2013.
Susan Chesler (Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University) presented “Old Faces, New Places: Assimilating Lateral Hires into Successful Legal Writing Programs” (with Professors Kimberly Holst, Andrew Carter, and Janet Dickson) at the Association of Legal Writing Directors 2013 Biennial Conference in June 2013, and was a co-‐facilitator for the “Innovative Teaching Workshop” at the Association of Legal Writing Directors 2013 Biennial Conference in June 2013.
Cara Cunningham (University of Detroit Mercy School of Law) gave several presentations:
• Plenary Speaker at the Association of Legal Writing Directors Innovative Teaching Workshop Marquette University Law School, “Empowerment Teaching: The Intersection and Impact of Learning Theories in the Classroom.”
• Capital Area Legal Writing Conference at American University Washington College of Law., “Empowerment Teaching & Metacognition: Putting Modern Learning Theories to Work.” (University of Detroit Mercy School of Law).
• Committee on Regional Training Webinar for Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, “Plain English Writing Skills for Legal Services Providers.”
Jim Dimitri (Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law) presented “Hitting the ‘Send’ Button: Translating the Traditional Long-‐Form Memorandum into an Informal E-‐Mail Memorandum” at the Central States Legal Writing Conference at the University of Kansas School of Law on September 28, 2013.
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Professor Olympia Duhart (Nova Southeastern University) recently made the following presentations:
• “Discussion Group: Measuring Student Performance, Student Assessment Validity, and Teaching Effectiveness,” Meeting for Southeastern Association of Law Schools, Palm Beach, FL in August 2013.
• “How to Become a Law Professor,” National Bar Association Annual Meeting, Miami Beach, FL in July 2013.
• “Best of Both Worlds: Using LRW Methods in the Doctrinal Classroom,” Association of Legal Writing Directors Conference, Marquette University Law School, Milwaukee, WI in June 2013.
• “The Trick is the Treat: How Reese’s Cups Can Help Students Overcome the Challenge of Synthesizing Rules,” Capital Area Legal Writing Conference, American University, Washington, D.C. in March 2013 (co-‐presented with Hugh Mundy).
• “Social Justice Lawyers,” Careers in Law, University of Miami, Miami, FL in February 2013.
Bernadette Gargano (SUNY Buffalo Law School) and Elizabeth Keith (American University Washington College of Law) presented “Offering Transactional Legal Skills in the Challenging Con?ines of a Summer Curriculum” at the Capital Area Writing Conference at American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. in March 2013.
Bernadette Gargano (SUNY Buffalo Law School) and Johanna Oreskovic (SUNY Buffalo Law School) taught as part of the Law School’s Admission Council’s “Discover Law Program” at SUNY Buffalo Law School in June 2013. Under a six-‐?igure annual grant awarded to SUNY Buffalo Law, Professors Gargano and Oreskovic taught a course on the fundamentals of the United States Legal System, legal analysis, and oral advocacy. The program is an effort to promote diversity in law schools and the legal profession. They also directed and taught the Second Annual Extended Learning Experience on Lawyers as Agents of Social Change in August 2013, a collaborative effort among SUNY Buffalo Law School, University at Buffalo Undergraduate Academies, and the Robert H. Jackson Center. This program was founded by Bernadette Gargano (SUNY Buffalo Law School) and Monica Wallace (SUNY Buffalo Law School) in August 2012 as the pilot program for learning extension programs at the University at Buffalo. The learning experience was housed on the campus of the historic Chautauqua Institute. This year’s theme focused on restorative justice, mass incarceration, and the impact of Justice Jackson on national and international legal issues.
Bernadette Gargano (SUNY Buffalo Law School), Monica Piga Wallace (SUNY Buffalo Law School), and Elizabeth Greenough (Charlotte School of Law) presented “Storytelling at Sentencing: Exploiting Opportunities for Persuasion in the Post-‐Booker Era” at the Fourth Biennial Applied Legal Storytelling Conference held at the City Law School at Gray’s Inn in London, UK in July 2013.
Nan Haynes (SUNY Buffalo) presented to the local chapter of National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) about jail conditions at the Erie County Holding Center in August 2013. She also presented to the Human Rights Committee of the Erie County Bar Association about current issues involving our two county jails in Spring 2013.
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Log in to the Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research at http://
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Access the Program for the 2014 Annual Meeting at
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19
Dana Hill (Northwestern University) presented “Using Problematized Teaching to Engage First-‐Year Law Students in in the Legal Writing Classroom” at Northwestern University’s Learning, Teaching and Assessment Forum: “Critical Re?lections on Learning”, for all university faculty in October 2013. She also presented "Advocating for Yourself: Connecting Legal Writing to Student Job Searches and Success" at the Third Annual Western Regional Legal Writing Conference in August 2013.
Kimberly Holst (Arizona State Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law) presented on a panel for “IP Issues in Real Estate Transactions” at the Business Law Section's Intellectual Property Committee Program at the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco in August 2013; she also presented “Telling the Dif?icult Story: Challenges that Arise in Client Advocacy” at the 4th Biennial Applied Legal Storytelling Conference held at The City Law School in London in July 2013; she co-‐presented “Old Faces, New Places: Assimilating Lateral Hires into Successful Legal Writing Programs” with Andrew Carter (ASU), Susan Chesler (ASU), & Janet Dickson (Seattle) at the ALWD Biennial Conference held at Marquette University in June 2013.
Aaron House (University of Missouri-‐Kansas City) presented “Professionalism and the 'LOL' Generation: An Updated Approach to Incorporating Professionalism Skills Into First-‐Year Legal Research and Writing Courses” at the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference in March 2013. He also presented “Introducing the Millennial Generation to the Legal Profession by Incorporating Professionalism into Legal Research and Writing Courses” at the Central States Legal Writing Conference in September 2013.
Allison Kort (University of Missouri-‐Kansas City) presented a “Teaching Take-‐Away” at the Central States Legal Writing Conference in September 2013.
Amy Langenfeld (Sandra O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University) gave a presentation at the Third Annual Western Regional Legal Writing Conference at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, Calif. The conference, Lead the Change, was held Aug. 9-‐10. Langenfeld’s presentation, “Walter Matthau and Lawyering Ethics: Film Clips to Introduce the Lawyer’s Role as Advisor,” focused on images of the practice of law outside the courtroom. Participants discussed the risks and bene?its of pop culture in the classroom, non-‐courtroom lawyering scenes in courtroom drama movies, and some potential lessons in TV lawyers, such as Saul Goodman on “Breaking Bad.”
Cristina D. Lockwood (University of Detroit Mercy School of Law) spoke on “An Apprenticeship Approach: Creating Communities of Practice in the Classroom to Facilitate Learning” at the Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference in April 2013.
Suzanna Moran (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) presented “Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?” at the Rocky Mountain Regional Legal Writing Conference in March 2013.
MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Michael D. Murray (Valparaiso University School of Law) presented:
• Central States Legal Writing Conference, University of Kansas School of Law, Sep. 28, 2013, "Putting Storytelling into Practice: Narrativity in Five Sections of a Brief," http://ssrn.com/abstract=2331824
• Scholars Conference of the Central States Legal Writing Conference, Co-‐Director, University of Kansas School of Law, Sep. 27, 2013;
• Post-‐Myriad Genetics Copyright of Synthetic Biology and Living Media, DePaul University College of Law, Aug. 13, 2013;
• Intellectual Property and Communications Law Conference, Glen Arbor, MI, May 14, 2013, “Reconstructing the Contours of the Copyright Originality and Idea-‐Expression Doctrines regarding the Right to Deny Access to Works”;
• Global Legal Skills Conference VIII, San Jose, Costa Rica, March 12, 2013, "Visual Rhetoric: Demonstration and Narrative," http://ssrn.com/abstract=2333679; and
• Global Legal Skills Conference VIII, San Jose, Costa Rica, March 11, 2013, “Methods for Teaching U.S. Law and Legal Reasoning.”
Laurel Oates (Seattle University School of Law) summarized her ?inding on how students are using the new research platforms at a session sponsored by LexisNexis at the AALS meeting held in Seattle, June 2013.
Stephen Paskey (SUNY Buffalo Law School) was frequently quoted by the press in connection with allegations that a 94-‐year-‐old Minnesota man participated in Nazi war crimes during World War II. Among other things, Stephen was extensively
interviewed by Minnesota Public Radio and participated in an on-‐line video webcast at HuffPost Live, a video-‐streaming news service run by the Huf?ington Post in July 2013.
Katie Pryal (University of North Carolina School of Law) presented:
• “Making Madness Public: The Genre of Coming Out Stories of the Psychiatrically Disabled.” Paper presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Las Vegas, NV, March 2013.
• Workshop Co-‐Organizer and Chair: Genres in Action. Conference on College Composition and Communication, Las Vegas, NV, March 2013.
• “Rhetorical Genre Theory for Legal Writing Pedagogy.” Work-‐in-‐progress paper presented at the Law and Rhetoric Colloquium hosted by Stetson University College of Law, March 2013.
• ”Polished Writing for Paralegals.” Keynote talk delivered at the North Carolina Bar Association Paralegal Division Annual Meeting in Greensboro, NC. (Co-‐Presenter Clinical Assistant Professor Kaci Bishop of UNC Law), May 10, 2013.
Laura Reilly (SUNY Buffalo Law School) presented “Interactive Ideas to Help Students Teach Themselves Necessary LAWR Skills” at the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference in March 2013.
Jennifer Murphy Romig (Emory Law) presented “iPads and Doceri for Teaching Legal Writing: Conventional and Unconventional Approaches” at the Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference in April 2013.
Judy Rosenbaum (Northwestern Law School) presented “Letting Go, Wrapping Up, Moving On,” at the 2013 Association of Legal Writing Directors Biennial Conference, Milwaukee Wisconsin, June 28, 2013.
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Nantiya Ruan (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) presented:
• "The Stories Clients Tell in Mediation: Teaching Narrative Technique to First Years" at the LWI One Day Workshop at ASU on December 6, 2013.
• "Scheduling Shortfalls: Hours Equity is the new Pay Equity" at ClassCrits at Southwestern Law School in November 2013. • “Client Storytelling in Mediation” at the Fourth
Applied Legal Storytelling Conference in July 2013.
• “Rethinking Pay Equity” at the Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in May 2013.
• “Student, Esquire?: The Practice of Law in the Collaborative Classroom” at the New York Law School Clinical Workshop Series in April 2013.
• “First Year ‘Malpractice’: Unauthorized Practice of Law in the First Year Hybrid Classroom” at the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference in March 2013.
Susie Salmon (University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law) presented "Training Future Bosses: Easy Ways Your Teaching Assistant Program Can Help Law Students Become More Effective, Professional, and Humane Supervisors in Practice" at the Biennial ALWD Conference at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She also presented “Teaching Teachers to Teach: Training Teaching Assistants and Writing Fellows” at the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference at Colorado Law in Boulder, Colorado.
Mimi Samuel (Seattle University School of Law) taught a three-‐week Introduction to the U.S. Legal System class as part of the Open Society Foundation’s pre-‐academic summer program in Istanbul, Turkey. The program prepares Open Society scholarship recipients for post-‐graduate study in the United States. Mimi’s class included students from Argentina, Colombia, Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, Kenya, and Nepal, July 2013.
Robert Somers (Whittier Law School) presented "YouWait: Avoid Buffering and Other Issues While Using Video in the Classroom" at the Global Legal Skills Conference, Costa Rica, on March 12, 2013.
Denis Stearns (Seattle University School of Law) was moderator and discussant for a panel of paper-‐presentations on “Framing Food Risk and Safety,” at the Joint 2013 Annual Meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFHVS) and the Association for the Study Of Food and Society (ASFS), on June 21, 2013, at Michigan State University.
Judy Stinson (Arizona State Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law) presented “What Makes a Program a Program?” (with Terrill Pollman & Linda Edwards) at the ALWD Biennial Conference hosted by Marquette in June 2013.
Wanda Temm (University of Missouri-‐Kansas City) moderated a panel on "The Triumphs and Pitfalls of Going Directorless" at the ALWD Biennial Conference in June 2013.
Wanda Temm and Judith Popper (University of Missouri-‐Kansas City) presented "Experiment Away! Cross-‐Curricular Professional Skills Training in the First Year" at the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference in March 2013 and at the Central States Legal Writing Conference in September 2013.
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(At left) Participants at the ALWD Innovative Teaching Conference, held at Marquette University in conjunction with the ALWD
Conference in June 2013
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David Thomson (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) presented:
• SEALS Conference on teaching law through whole-‐course simulations. He also participated on a panel about methods of assessment in legal education.
• "What Structural and Curricular Changes are Necessary to Ensure our Grads have the Right Competencies?" at the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Conference in October 2013, with Sam Estreicher (NYU) and John Garvey (UNH);
• "Collection, Review, and Production: The Evolving Roles of People, Process, and Technology," at the 2nd Annual Education Summit for State Court Judges: Unlocking eDiscovery in September 2013, with Maura Grossman, Sean Gallagher, Stanton Dodge, and Patrick Oot;
• “Measuring Student Performance, Assessment Validity, and Teaching Effectiveness” at the SEALS Annual Conference in August 2013 (with Joan Heminway, Andi Curcio, Bob Seibel, Barbara Glesner-‐Fines, Michael Hunter Schwartz, Olympia Duhart, Susan Brooks, and Steven Friedland);
• “Using Simulation-‐based Courses to Teach Law Students” at the SEALS Annual Conference in August 2013 (with Todd Peppers, Eleanor Lanier, Sue Payne, Tahirih Lee, and Tamar Birkhead);
• “At the Junction of Storytelling and Professional Identity” at the Fourth Applied Legal Storytelling Conference in July 2013 (with Cliff Zimmerman);
• “Two Approaches to Teaching the Formation of Professional Identity in Contemporary Law Students” at the Association of Legal Writing Directors Biennial Conference in June 2013 (with Ian Gallacher); and
• “Escaping Flatland: A Thought Experiment” at the Rocky Mountain Regional Legal Writing Conference in March 2013.
Bobbie Thyfault (California Western School of Law) presented two lectures on "Public Security and the U.S. Constitution: The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments" at the Universidad Catolica de Argentina (Parana) July 5-‐6, 2013.
Kathleen Elliott Vinson (Suffolk University Law School) presented “Problem Solving: Preparing Law Students to be Client-‐Ready,” at the Southeastern Regional Legal Writing Conference, Savannah, Ga., in April 2013.
Eric Voigt (Faulkner Law) presented the CLE course "Becoming a Rock Star Researcher" in September 2013. He will present another CLE seminar, "Free Research on the Web: Finding Law, Sample Litigation Documents, Public Records, and More," in Montgomery, Alabama, in November & December 2013.
All ?ive legal writing faculty from Washburn University School of Law attended the ALWD conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and presented in individual sessions as well as in a panel session about coordination of faculty in a directorless program.
Catherine Wasson (Elon University School of Law) participated in a panel, "Love Me Now, or Thank Me Later?" at the ALWD Conference in Milwaukee in June 2013. She also served as moderator and presented on a panel, "Becoming a Good Classroom Teacher," at the SEALS conference in August 2013.
Catherine Wasson & Patricia Perkins (Elon University School of Law) presented "Core Grammar for Lawyers -‐ Predictor of Success?" at the North & South Carolina Legal Research & Writing Colloquium in May 2013.
Barbara Wilson (University of Missouri-‐Kansas City) presented "Secrets from the Crayon Box: Using Colors and Blocks to Connect Students to IRAC" at the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference in March 2013.
MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
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MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
Publications
Mary Garvey Algero, Warren E. Mouledoux Distinguished Professor of Law (Loyola University New Orleans College of Law), has published the second edition of Louisiana Legal Research. Suzanne E. Rowe, James L. and Ilene R. Hershner Professor (University of Oregon), is the editor of the Legal Research Series.
Robert Anderson (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) published Anderson on Colorado Civil Litigation Forms, First Ed. (CLE in Colo., Inc., Supp. 2013).
Debra Austin (University of Denver Sturm College of Law), Killing Them Softly: Neuroscience Reveals How Brain Cells Die From Law School Stress and How Neural Self-‐Hacking Can Optimize Cognitive Performance, 59 LOY. L. REV. (forthcoming Winter 2014).
Christine Pedigo Bartholomew (SUNY Buffalo Law School), Time: An Empirical Analysis of Law Student Time Management De?iciencies, 81 U. CIN. L. REV. 3 (2013).
Deborah L. Borman (Northwestern University Law School) published:
Article Teaching Professional Identity in The Law Teacher, Fall 2013 Issue.
Featured columnist for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. Her recent articles include An Unfortunate Story of Weak Liability Laws, Chi. Daily L. Bull., 7/31/2013, page 4; and Always be Cautious when Biking to Work, Chi. Daily L. Bull., 6/6/2013.
Mary Bowman (Seattle University School of Law), Full Disclosure: Cognitive Science, Informers, and Search Warrant Scrutiny, Akron Law Review (accepted for publication Fall 2013).
Kelly Brewer (University of Denver Sturm College of Law), Tsunami Warning: The Necessities and Advantages of Adding Licensed Mental Health Counselors as Medicare Mental Health Care Providers, 90 Denv. U. L. Rev. Online 48 (2013), available at http://www.denverlawreview.org/online-‐articles/2013/4/14/tsunami-‐warning-‐the-‐necessities-‐and-‐advantages-‐of-‐adding-‐lic.html.
Katherine L. Caldwell (University of Denver Sturm College of Law), Harboring Pirates on the New York Stock Exchange? A Look at "Mere Corporate Presence" in Kiobel, 91 Denv. U. L. Rev. Online 19 (2013), available at http://www.denverlawreview.org/storage/online-‐article-‐pdfs/2013/KCaldwellDULROnlineArticle_Final-‐Format.pdf
Charles Calleros (Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, ASU) published the following:
• Traditional OfUice Memoranda and E-‐mail Memos, in Practice and in the First Semester, 21Perspectives: Teaching Legal Res. & Writing 105 (West 2013).
• Cause, Consideration, Promissory Estoppel, and Promises Under Deed: What Our Students Should Know about Enforcement of Promises in Historical and International Context, XIII CHI.-‐KENT. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 84 (2013).
• LAW SCHOOL EXAMS: PREPARING AND WRITING TO
WIN (2d ed. 2013) (for beginning law students). • CONTRACTS: CASES, TEXT, AND PROBLEMS (2013
edition, Carolina Acad. Press) (e-‐book with two new chapters on third party rights authored by Stephen Gerst).
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MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
John Campbell (University of Denver Sturm College of Law), published:
• Can We Trust Trustees?: Proposals for Reducing Wrongful Foreclosures, 63 CATH. U. L. REV. ___ (forthcoming 2014);
• Mis-‐Concepcion: Why Cognitive Science Proves the Emperors Have No Robes, 79 BROOK. L. REV. ___ (forthcoming 2013);
• Unprotected Class: Five Decisions, Five Justices, and Wholesale Changes to Class Action Law, 13 WYO. L. REV. __ (forthcoming 2013) (requested); and• Workplace Privacy in Social Media in Emerging
Technologies in the Employment Context, in 2013 EMPLOYMENT LAW UPDATE 8.01 (Henry H. Perritt Jr. ed., 2013) (with Timothy Grochocinsky).
Susan M. Chesler (Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University), Karen Sneddon (Mercer Law), and Patrick Longan (Mercer Law), A Day in the Life of a Lawyer: Property Module (Wolters Kluwer Law and Business, 2013).
Susan M. Chesler and Karen Sneddon, Measuring Student Progress: Assessing and Providing Feedback, 14 Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law, 2013 Special Report, at 489.
Susan M. Chesler, Anna Hemingway, and Tamara Hererra, Publication Opportunities Beyond the Traditional Law Review, 27(1) The Second Draft, Summer 2013, at 8.
Kirsten Davis and Kristen Tiscione (Georgetown University Law Center) have published companion pieces following up on their presentations at the Biennial Conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors in June. See Kirsten K. Davis, The Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated': Reading and Writing Objective Legal Memoranda in a Mobile
Computing Age, 92 OR. L. REV. __ (forthcoming December 2013); Kristen K. Tiscione, The Rhetoric of Email, 92 OR. L. REV. __ (forthcoming December 2013); Kristen K. Tiscione, A Writing Revolution: Using Legal Writing’s “Hobble” to Solve Legal Education’s Problem, 42 CAP. U. L. REV. __ (forthcoming 2013).
Professor Olympia Duhart (Nova Southeastern University) is the co-‐author of SKILLS AND VALUES: CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, (with William Araiza, Thomas Baker and Steve Friedland) (LexisNexis 2013).
Christina M. Frohock (University of Miami Law School), Military Justice as Justice: Fitting Confrontation Clause Jurisprudence into Military Commissions, 48 New Eng. L. Rev. (forthcoming January 2014).
Emily Grant (Washburn University School of Law), Memorializing the Meal: An Analogical Exercise for Transactional Drafting, 36 U. HAW. L. REV. ____ (forthcoming 2014), with William E. Foster (Arkansas).
Stephanie Roberts Hartung (Suffolk University Law School), Missing the Forest for the Trees: Federal Habeas Corpus and the Piecemeal Problem in Actual Innocence Cases, 10 Stan. J. C.R. & C.L. (forthcoming fall 2013).
Nan Haynes (SUNY Buffalo) wrote a guest editorial that was published in the Buffalo News titled County Needs an Independent Review of Jail Complaints on August 5, 2013.
Tamara Herrera (Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University) published Arizona Legal Research (2d ed. 2013). She also published Publication Opportunities Beyond the Traditional Law Review (with Anna Hemingway and Susan Chesler), 27(1) The Second Draft, Summer 2013, at 8.
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MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
The Legal Research Series by Carolina Academic Press has added new editions and new titles. The following books are in second editions: Arizona Legal Research by Tamara Herrera (ASU); California Legal Research by Hether Macfarlane (McGeorge), Aimee Dudovitz (Loyola, Los Angeles) and Suzanne Rowe (Oregon); Louisiana Legal Research by Mary Garvey Algero (Loyola-‐New Orleans). These three books are new titles for the series: Oklahoma Legal Research by Darin Fox, Darla Jackson, and Courtney Shelby; West Virginia Legal Research by Hollee Schwartz Temple; and Wyoming Legal Research by Deb Person and Tawnya Plumb.
Kimberly Holst (Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University), Contract Drafting: Teaching with Forms, 14 TRANSACTIONS: TENN. J. BUS. L. 361 (Special Ed. 2013); Intellectual Property Issues in Real Property Transactions, in INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DESKBOOK FOR THE BUSINESS LAWYER, 421-‐39 (Sharon K. Sandeen, ed., 3d ed. ABA 2013).
Jeffrey Jackson (Washburn University School of Law) and David Cleveland (Valparaiso University Law School) have co-‐authored Legal Writing: A History; Part I—From the Colonial Era to the End of the Civil War, which documents how legal writing instruction was done in early U.S. history. It is being published by the Journal of the Legal Writing Institute. Also, Jackson is the new co-‐author of the Interactive Citation Workbook for the ALWD Citation Manual.
Jethro K. Lieberman (New York Law School), published LIBERALISM UNDRESSED (Oxford University Press) and JUMPSTART CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (Wolters-‐Kluwer Law & Business).
Noah Messing (Yale Law School) published his ?irst book, THE ART OF ADVOCACY. The book collects and annotates unusually strong excerpts of briefs and motions.
Mary-‐Beth Moylan, Stephanie Thompson, and contributing authors (Paci_ic McGeorge School of Law), GLOBAL LAWYERING SKILLS (West 2013).
Michael D. Murray (Valparaiso University School of Law) has published the following:
• ADVANCED LEGAL WRITING AND ORAL ADVOCACY: TRIALS, APPEALS, AND MOOT COURT (Foundation Press 2d ed., forthcoming Dec. 2013) (with Christy DeSanctis)
• Reconstructing the Contours of the Copyright Originality and Idea-‐Expression Doctrines regarding the Right to Deny Access to Works, 20 Tex. A & M L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming, 2013–2014 Intellectual Property Symposium)
• The Promise of Parentheticals: An Empirical Study of the Use of Parentheticals in Federal Appellate Briefs, 10 Legal Comm. & Rhetoric: JALWD 229 (2013)
Robert Parrish’s (Elon University School of Law), article How Quickly We Forget: The Short and Undistinguished Career of AfUirmative Action has been accepted for publication by the South Carolina Law Review.
Sue Provenzano and Sarah Schrup (Northwestern University Law School), published The Conscious Curriculum: From Novice Towards Mastery in Written Legal Analysis and Advocacy, 108 Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy 80 (2013), available at http://colloquy.law.northwestern.edu/main/2013/09/the-‐conscious-‐curriculum.html.
Katie Pryal (University of North Carolina School of Law) published The Genre Discovery Approach: Preparing Law Students to Write Any Legal Document, ___ Wayne L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming) and Reframing Sanity: Scapegoating the Mentally Ill in the Case of Jared Loughner, in RE/FRAMING IDENTIFICATIONS 159-‐168 (Michelle Ballif ed., 2013).
Teresa J. Reid Rambo and Leanne J. P_laum (University of Florida Levin College of Law), Legal Writing by Design: A Guide to Great Briefs and Memos (Carolina Academic Press 2013).
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MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
Sara Rankin (Seattle University School of Law) will publish her article Invidious Deliberation: The Problem of Congressional Bias in Federal Hate Crime Legislation, in Rutgers Law Review. Also, her forthcoming article The Fully Formed Lawyer: Why Law Schools Should Require Public Service to Better Prepare Students for Private Practice was recently listed on SSRN's Top Ten download list for Business & Professional Ethics. It will be published in the fall volume of the Chapman Law Review.
Nantiya Ruan (University of Denver Sturm College of Law), published:
• Same Law, Different Day: The Last Thirty Years of Wage Litigation and its Impact on Low-‐Wage Workers, 31 HOFSTRA LABOR & EMP. L. J. (forthcoming 2013); • Scheduling Shortfalls: Hours Parity as the New Pay
Equity (co-‐authored with Professor Nancy Reichman), 59 VILLANOVA L. REV. (forthcoming 2014); • "Sexting" and Surveillance: How Smartphones
Change Workplace Harassment, 90 Denv. U. L. Rev. Online 7 (2013), available at http://www.denverlawreview.org/online-‐articles/2013/2/24/sexting-‐and-‐surveillance-‐how-‐smartphones-‐change-‐workplace-‐ha.html; • Student, Esquire?; The Practice of Law in the
Collaborative Classroom, CLINICAL L. REV. (forthcoming 2014); and• What's Left to Remedy Wage Theft? How
Arbitration Mandates that Bar Class Actions Impact Low-‐Wage Workers, 2013 MICH. ST. L. REV.1103 (2013).
Beginning with its October 2013 issue, Arizona Attorney magazine features a monthly legal-‐writing column, “The Legal Word,” by Professor Susie Salmon (University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law).
Helene Shapo, Marilyn Walter and Betsy Fajans (Northwestern University Law School) have published the 6th edition of their book Writing and Analysis in the Law with Foundation Press.
In March 2013, Robert F. Somers (Whittier Law School) published Slander? Prove It: Why a Two Hundred-‐Year-‐Old Defamation Law Should Be Changed, 19 SOUTHWESTERN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 133 (2012).
Denis Stearns (Seattle University School of Law) has accepted an offer to publish his article, A Continuing Plague: Faceless Transactions and the Coincident Rise of Food Adulteration and Legal Regulation of Quality in the Wisconsin Law Review. He has also signed a contract to author two entries in FOOD ISSUES: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA, a multivolume inter-‐disciplinary reference-‐work being edited by Ken Albala, Ph.D., published by Sage Publications. The entries will be entitled, E. coli O157:H7:A Multi-‐faceted History and Food, Torts, and Civil Litigation, pub. date: 2014.
Judy Stinson (Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University) The Teaching, Scholarship, and Service Triathlon, 27 The Second Draft, no.1, at 24 (Summer 2013).
David Thomson (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) published his new hybrid legal writing textbook Skills & Values: Lawyering Process -‐ Legal Writing and Oral Advocacy (LexisNexis/Matthew Bender 2013). This book allows teachers to assign less print reading and customize the text by making adjustments to the fully populated webcourse that comes with the book and published Skills & Values: Lawyering Process – Legal Writing and Advocacy (LexisNexis/Matthew Bender 2013) and published Using Student Evaluation Data to Examine and Improve Your Program, 21 PERSPECTIVES: TEACHING LEGAL RES. AND WRITING 115 (Spring 2013).
Eric Voigt (Faulkner Law) published Explanatory Parentheticals Can Pack a Persuasive Punch, 45 McGeorge L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2013).
Catherine J. Wasson (Elon University School of Law) with John C. Dernbach et al., published A Practical Guide to Legal Writing & Legal Method (5th ed. 2013).
Jodi L. Wilson (Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, The University of Memphis), published Proceed with Extreme Caution: Citation to Wikipedia in Light of Contributor Demographics and Content Policies, 16 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. Law (Jan. 2014) and Teaching by Engaging; Engaging by Gaming, The Learning Curve, Summer 2013, at 11.
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SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law recently added two upper-level legal writing
courses to its curriculum: Contract Drafting and Judicial Opinion Writing.
Loyola Law School, Los Angeles welcomed two new full-time Associate Clinical Professors to its Legal
Writing and Lawyering Skills program: Professors Maureen Johnson and Katherine Lyons.
The University of Massachusetts School of Law - Dartmouth has converted the first year of its
three-semester Legal Skills Program from an adjunct model to a full-time model. Carol Mallory and Jason
Potter have joined UMass Law as the first full-time faculty members hired to teach the Legal Skills Program.
Professor Mallory comes to UMass Law by way of Northeastern University School of Law. Professor Potter
comes to UMass Law by way of the University of San Diego School of Law.
The University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law's faculty approved the Legal Writing
Program moving to an autonomous program. Wanda Temm is stepping down as director after fourteen years.
Effective July 1, 2013, the William S. Boyd School of Law/UNLV legal writing faculty has moved from a
director model to a cooperative model where programmatic decisions are made collaboratively. Also, effective
July 1, 2013, Peter Bayer, Sara Gordon, and Rebecca Scharf have moved to a unified tenure-track as Associate
Professors with the rights and privileges accorded all tenure-track professors, including a three-course annual
teaching load. They continue to teach legal writing as well as other substantive courses. Finally, we are very
happy to have Karen Sneddon of Mercer Law School as a Visiting Professor at UNLV for the 2013-2014
academic year.
Stetson University College of Law announces the creation of its Institute for the Advancement of Legal
Communication. Kirsten Davis will serve as the Institute's founding Director. Professors Brooke Bowman,
Catherine Cameron, Lance Long, and Jason Palmer are part of the Institute's founding faculty. The Institute is
dedicated to teaching, scholarship, and service that improve the quality of legal communication, both spoken
and written.
Program Announcements Continue on Page 28
PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENTS
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The University of Pennsylvania Law School launched a new program in Legal Practice Skills this fall.
The 6-credit course replaced Legal Writing in the first-year curriculum, and features expanded professional
instruction, training in a broader range of essential legal practice skills, and a sharper focus on informal oral and written communication. As part of the new program launch, Penn Law also added four new members to
its Legal Practice Skills faculty. They are:
• John Bradley, who has a background in large law-firm and nonprofit work. After working for five years as an associate in Jones Day’s Washington office, John transitioned to the nonprofit world, where he most recently
served as Senior Staff Attorney for Habitat for Humanity International.
• Alison Kehner, a three-time federal law clerk (to Judges Rendell and Greenberg of the Third Circuit Court of
Appeals and Judge Cooper of the District of New Jersey) and an experienced legal writing scholar and
teacher. Alison previously taught legal writing, analysis, and communication at Widener Law School, and has received teaching and scholarship grants from the Association of Legal Writing Directors and the Legal
Writing Institute.
• Felicia Lin L’08, a former public defender at the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx. As a Penn Law student, Felicia
was a Toll Public Interest Scholar and a finalist in the Edwin R. Keedy Cup. Felicia also co-founded the Penn
Law Prisoners’ Legal Education Clinic.
• Cecilia Silver, an experienced public- and private-sector litigator. Cecilia began her career in Weil Gotshal’s
New York office, served as a clerk for Judge Griesa of the SDNY, and, most recently, served as Senior Counsel in the New York City Law Department’s Special Federal Litigation Division. At the New York City
Law Department, Cecilia acted as lead counsel in more than 40 cases and appeared before more than 30
federal judges.
The University of Richmond School of Law is pleased to welcome a new team of full-time faculty
hired to enhance its first-year Lawyering Skills program. Richmond Law’s Lawyering Skills program was previously taught by adjunct faculty. The five faculty members are: Christopher Corts, Tamar Schwartz Eisen,
Laura Khatcheressian, Doron Samuel-Siegel, and Rachel Suddarth. This team will collaboratively design and
develop a new program to teach first-year students to engage in a principled, systematic process of legal research, analysis, and writing in partnership with legal library faculty.
Washburn University College of Law goes to Georgia—the country! During the past year, Washburn Law’s legal writing program has conducted three “train-the-trainers” workshops for law faculty at our partner
school in Tbilisi, Georgia. Washburn Law is partnered with the Free University of Tbilisi Law School under a
USAID grant for legal education development in this young democratic state. Professors Aida Alaka, Tonya Kowalski, and Joseph Mastrosimone presented objective analysis, persuasive analysis, and legal writing
curriculum and course design. This October, Professors Alaka and Kowalski return for a similar workshop on transactional drafting for Free University’s National Center for Commercial Law, an institute developed
through this transatlantic partnership.
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PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENTS
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SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
The John Marshall Law School – Global Legal Skills Conference Verona, Italy, May 21-23,
2014 – Call for Proposals
The Global Legal Skills Conference is the leading international gathering for global skills education. GLS-9 will
be held at the University of Verona Faculty of Law from May 21-23, 2014, with an optional day trip to Vicenza
on May 24, 2014. Proposals are invited for individual or group presentations on any aspect of Global Legal
Skills, including distance education, course design and materials, teaching methods, and teaching opportunities,
as well as substantive programs on international or comparative law. Submit proposals through the conference
website at www.glsverona.com or by email to [email protected]. Proposals submitted after January 13,
2014 will be considered on a space-available basis. Prof. Mark Wojcik, The John Marshall Law School, 315 S.
Plymouth Court, Chicago, IL 60604, Tel. 1-312-987 -2391, [email protected].
Deborah L. Borman (Northwestern University Law School) is organizing an Institute for
Law Teaching and Learning conference. The conference will be based on the recently released
Harvard University Press book "What the Best Law Teachers Do," and will take place at Northwestern
University School of Law, June 25-27, 2014. The conference will feature speakers from a dozen law schools
from around the country who are profiled in the book. Presenters teach a wide variety of courses across the
curriculum including administrative law, civil procedure, clinics, constitutional law, criminal law, criminal
procedure, election law, family law, labor law, legal writing, pretrial advocacy, professional responsibility,
property, sexuality and the law, torts, transactional drafting, and trial advocacy.
The Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference will be held at Stetson University
College of Law in Gulfport, Florida, on Friday and Saturday, April 25 and 26, 2014.
Keynote speaker will be Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute.
Washburn University School of Law is making plans to host a Junior Legal Writing
Scholars Workshop next August. Stay tuned for more information!
CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENTS
Congratulations to all the hosts of the Legal
Writing Institute’s One-Day Workshops:Arizona State University
Charleston Law
Drexel University
Marquette University
St. Louis University
Suffolk University
Thomas Jefferson
Touro Law Center
University of Baltimore
University of Kentucky
University of Michigan
University of Oregon
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Additional programs of interest at the AALS Annual Meeting 2014
Friday, Jan. 3 – 10:30-12:15
• Litigation – Preparing the 21st Century Litigator
• Part-time Division – Reaching Our Part-time Students—Flipped, MOOC’d, or Blended: Developing Strategies to Engage
the Part-time Curriculum
• Women in Legal Education – Speed Mentoring
Friday, Jan. 3 – 1:30 to 3:15
• Curriculum – Positive Responses to Hard Times and New Expectations
• Law Libraries and Legal Information – What Students Don’t Know (But Should) About Research in Practice
• Scholarship—Legal Scholarship Beyond the Law Review: Books, Briefs, Letters, and Other Avenues of Influence
Friday, Jan. 3 – 3:30 to 5:15
• Libraries and Technology—The Law Library: Creative and Strategic Innovation in the Midst of Change
Saturday, Jan. 4 – 8:30-10:15
• Law and Interpretation – Law as Interpretation
Saturday, Jan. 4 –10:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
• Academic Support—Early Intervention for At-Risk Students
Saturday, Jan. 4 – 2:00-3:45
• Professional Responsibility—The Lost Lawyer and the Lawyer-Statesman Ideal: A Generation Later—the Shifting Sands of Professional Identity
• Teaching Methods—Masters at Work: The Many Facets of Effective Teaching
Saturday, Jan. 4—4:00-5:45 p.m.
• New Law Professors—Developing as a Legal Scholar: Thoughts for New Law Professors
• Transactional Law and Skills—Value Creation by Business Lawyers in the 21st Century
Sunday, Jan. 5—2 p.m. to 5 p.m. (simultaneous with LWRR session)
• Balance in Legal Education and Teaching Methods—The Many Connections Between Well-Being and Professionalism in the Practice of Law: Implications for Teaching
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
Barbara Blumenfeld retired from the University of New Mexico School of Law effective August 1, 2013. She served as director of the legal writing program there beginning in 1995 and was voted emeritus status upon her retirement. She began teaching legal writing at Wayne State University in 1985.
Spotlight on Retirements
31
“Serving on the Awards Committee was rewarding because I had the opportunity to work with legal research and writing professors whom I respect, and because I learned so much more about the amazing nominees who have contributed to our profession!”
Wendy Adele Humphrey (Texas Tech Law School)
“I really enjoyed working on the Program Committee because the proposals introduced me to great work on interesting issues being done all around the country, and I got to work collaboratively with fantastic colleagues from around the country.”
Mary Bowman (Seattle University School of Law)
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
With Gratitude to the 2013 Section Committees
“As the Nominating Committee for the Section, we have received nominations for some impressive people. Once again, we are reminded of how many talented and dedicated individuals serve in our community. They are willing to do more than teach their classes and engage in scholarship. They are willing to contribute to the larger communities of legal writing and legal education.”
Lou Sirico (Villanova) and Helene Shapo (Northwestern)
Program Committee Chair Mary Bowman (Seattle), Sabrina DeFabritiis (Suffolk), Cassandra L. Hill (Thurgood Marshall), Rebecca Scharf (UNLV), Amy Vorenberg (New Hampshire), Elizabeth Lenhart (Cincinnati),
Deborah McGregor (IU-‐Indianapolis)
Poster Committee Co-‐chair Cathren Koehlert-‐Page (Barry), co-‐chair Jerry Rock (Albany), Emily Grant (Washburn), Kathryn Mercer (Case Western), Susan Bendlin (Barry), Karen Sneddon (Mercer), Andrea Funk (Whittier), Lurene Contento (John Marshall—
Chicago)
Outreach Committee/Diversity Chair Margaret Hannon (Michigan), David Austin (California Western), David Cleveland (Valparaiso), Aimee Dudovitz (Loyola, Los Angeles), Gabrielle L. Goodwin (Indiana), Margaret Ioannides (Florida Coastal), Ann Killenbeck (Arkansas), Myra Orlen (Western New England), Suzanne Rowe (Oregon), Susan Salmon (Arizona), Ann Killenbeck (Arkansas), Amy Stein (Hofstra), Robert Volk (Boston Univ.),
Jodi Wilson (Memphis)
Media Committee Elizabeth Shaver (Akron), Michelle Zakarin (Touro),
Mark Osbeck (Michigan)
Awards Committee Chair Wendy Adele Humphrey (Texas Tech), Lyn Entrikin (Arkansas-‐Little Rock), Coleen Barger
(Arkansas-‐Little Rock), Grace Wigal (West Virginia), Catherine Wasson (Elon)
Nominations Committee Lou Sirico (Villanova), Helene Shapo
(Northwestern)
Please consider joining or chairing a Section
committee. Committee structure will be discussed
at the 2014 Business Meeting. To share
comments by e-mail, please e-mail Chair-Elect
Kimberly Holst at [email protected].
32
Section OfficersThank you for supporting the
newsletter of the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and
Research. The winter and fall 2014 issues will be produced by the Secretary for calendar year
2014.
Disclaimer
This newsletter and related web-site are forums for the exchange of points of view. Opinions ex-pressed here or on the website are not necessarily those of the Section and do not necessarily represent the position of the Association of American Law
Schools.
SECTION ON LEGAL WRITING, REASONING, AND RESEARCH FALL 2013
Chair Judy RosenbaumNorthwestern Law [email protected]
Chair-Elect Kimberly HolstSandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State [email protected]
Secretary Jennifer Murphy RomigEmory University School of [email protected]
Executive Committee Bob BrainLoyola Law School, Los [email protected]
Past Chair Kathleen Elliott VinsonSuffolk University Law [email protected]