Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL
Conference Schedule
Friday, April 26, 2013:
• Trolley Shuttle for Forum and Workshop participants: 7:00 am - 8:00 am
• Conference Registration Begins (at Savannah Law School “SLS”): 7:30 am – 5:30 pm
• Forum Breakfast: 7:30 am
• Forum Begins: 8:00 am
• Sponsor Set-up/Move-in: 9:00 am
• Forum Luncheon (The Mansion): 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
• Symposium Begins: 1:30 pm
• Refreshment Break: 3:25 pm - 3:40 pm
• Symposium Ends: 5:30 pm
• Trolley Shuttle from Hotels to Welcome Reception: 5:15 pm – 6:15 pm
• Welcome Reception: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
• Trolley Shuttle from Reception to Hotels: 7:15 pm – 8:15 pm
1 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Saturday, April 27, 2013:
• Trolley Shuttle from Hotels to SLS: 7:00 am - 8:00 am
• Conference Registration: 7:30 am - 10:00 am
• Sponsors Arrive: 7:30 am
• Morning Continental Breakfast Break: 7:45 am - 8:15 am (2nd and 3rd Floors)
• Presentations Begin: 8:15 am
• Breaks between Presentations (2nd and 3rd Floors)
• Lunch: 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm (2nd and 3rd Floors)
• Sponsor Presentations (optional): 12:45 - 1:05 pm
o It’s time to Advance – Meeting the challenges of teaching today’s mobile tech-savvy students: LexisNexis® has significant plans in place to make your life easier. Learn about the summer Law School migration plan to Lexis Advance® for access to all LexisNexis products and services. You’ll have new and updated teaching tools, including a free research eBook and additional training and support materials. These tools will save you time introducing Lexis Advance to your students.
o Westlaw and WoltersKluwer will also be presenting during the lunch hour - please see the schedule below for rooms and times.
o LWI new members are invited to dine together in Room 418.
• Presentations End: 3:45 pm
• Trolley Shuttle from SLS to Hotels: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
2 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Symposium Speaker Bios
Linda Edwards E.L. Cord Foundation Professor of Law
UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law Email: [email protected]
Professor Edwards joined UNLV Law in July 2009 after serving as Visiting Professor of Law in 2008-2009. Before joining the academy, Professor Edwards practiced law for eleven years. She then began her teaching career at the New York University School of Law, where she served as the Coordinator of the NYU Lawyering Program. In 1990, Professor Edwards joined the faculty at the Mercer University School of Law, where she was the Macon Professor of Law. During her 19 years at Mercer, Professor Edwards directed the legal writing program and taught in the areas of property, employment discrimination, advanced legal writing, professional responsibility, and legal reasoning.
Professor Edwards is a national leader in the field of legal writing, having been awarded the 2009 Thomas Blackwell Award for her lifetime achievements in and contributions to the field. She has published a number of articles and three books in the areas of legal writing and property, and she has served in a variety of capacities at the ABA and the American Association of Law Schools. Professor Edwards is a frequent speaker at national conferences, and she serves as a faculty member for the Persuasion Institute's Advanced Training Program in Narrative Construction, which is sponsored by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. She is currently working on her fourth book and on a series of articles on the intersection of narrative, metaphor, and law.
Areas of Expertise Education Property Law B.A., Florida State University Law and Rhetoric J.D., University of Tennessee College of Law Estates and Future Interests
3 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL
Kenneth D. Chestek Assistant Director, Legal Writing Program Assistant Director, Center for the Study of Written Advocacy Assistant Professor of Law
University of Wyoming College of Law Email: [email protected]
Kenneth D. Chestek joined the University of Wyoming College of Law faculty in the summer of 2012. He graduated cum laude from University of Pittsburgh School of Law where he was Editor in Chief of the Law Review. He practiced law for 21 years in Pennsylvania in a variety of settings, from solo practice to managing attorney for a branch office of a large law firm. While in practice, he also served for 18 years as Chief Civil Counsel to Erie County, Pennsylvania.
From 2010 to 2012 he served as President of the Legal Writing Institute. Previously, he served as a member of the Board of Directors and Treasurer of LWI. From 2005-2008 he co-chaired the ALWD/LWI Annual Survey Committee, and from 2004- 2008 he served as a member of the Editorial Board of Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, a peer- reviewed academic journal.
He has published and given lectures on a wide variety of subjects, including persuasion, teaching methods, tax exemption policy, hospitals and the uses of computers in law offices. His current scholarly interest is in the emerging discipline of Applied Legal Storytelling, which examines the role of narrative reasoning and storytelling in how judges decide cases. Professor Chestek is one of three co-authors of a new textbook for first-year courses in legal persuasion. All three authors are former Presidents of LWI. The book, Your Client's Story: Persuasive Legal Writing, will be published by Aspen in early 2013.
4 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL
Lucille Jewel Associate Professor
Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School Email: [email protected]
Lucille A. Jewel is an Associate Professor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School where she teaches Legal Writing, Advanced Appellate Advocacy, Client Interviewing and Counseling, and Professional Responsibility. Professor Jewel’s scholarship focuses on the culture of the legal profession and the intersections between technology, rhetoric, and the law. Before she came into law teaching, she litigated commercial cases in New York City, focusing on real estate, construction, intellectual property, and corporate disputes, in trial and appellate settings. Professor Jewel’s scholarship has appeared in journals such as the Buffalo Law Review, the University of Southern California Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science, and Technology. She received her J.D. from Tulane Law School and her B.A. from Columbia University.
Courses Advanced Appellate Advocacy Client Interviewing & Counseling Entertainment Law Legal Drafting Legal Research, Writing & Analysis I & II Pretrial Practice & Procedure Trial Advocacy
Education B.A., Columbia University J.D., Tulane University School of Law, cum laude
5 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL
Teri McMurty-Chubb Associate Professor of Law
Mercer University, Walter F. George School of Law Email: [email protected]
Teri McMurtry-Chubb joins the Mercer Law faculty as an Associate Professor of Law. She researches, teaches, and writes in the areas of discourse analysis and rhetoric, critical legal studies, hegemony studies, and legal history. She has lectured nationally on structural workplace discrimination, disproportionate sentencing for African Americans, racial and gender inequalities in post-secondary education, and African diasporic cultural forms. She has also facilitated narrative mediations of racial disputes in the academic workplace. Professor McMurtry-Chubb has taught at Loyola Law School-LA, California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, The University of Iowa, Des Moines Area Community College, Drake University School of Law, and Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University. While at Fairhaven College, she served as an Assistant Professor of Law and Hegemony Studies, and was the co-founder and first director of Fairhaven’s Center for Law, Diversity and Justice.
Prior to returning to academia, Professor McMurtry-Chubb was a Civil Litigation Associate at the law firm of Huber, Book, Cortese, Happe & Brown, P.L.C. (now Huber, Book, Cortese & Lanz, P.L.C.) in Des Moines, IA. At the time she joined the firm, she was the first person of color ever to be hired there and one of two African American women in the entire state of Iowa in private practice. She practiced in the areas of insurance defense, employment discrimination, and employee benefits involving the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Before entering private practice, McMurtry-Chubb became the first African American woman hired as a law clerk for the 5th Judicial District of Iowa.
In addition to teaching, Professor McMurtry-Chubb serves as a member of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) Board of Trustees, and as Chair of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) Diversity Initiatives Committee. She has served as the Chair of the Iowa National Bar Association (the founding chapter of the National Bar Association), and as a gubernatorial appointee to the Iowa State Historical Society Board of Trustees.
6 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL
J. Christopher Rideout Professor of Lawyering Skills and Associate Director of the Legal Writing Program
Seattle University School of Law E-mail: [email protected]
While a graduate student at the University of Washington, Professor Rideout taught writing. He then joined the English department at the University of Puget Sound. From 1981-84 he co-directed a regional writing project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He joined the faculty in 1981 and serves as the Associate Director of the Legal Writing program. Co-founder of the Legal Writing Institute, he chaired its board of directors for several years. Professor Rideout has been editor-in-chief of the journal Legal Writing and serves on its editorial board.
COURSES Law Language and Literature Advanced Legal Writing Legal Drafting
EDUCATION B.A., University of Puget Sound, 1972 M.A., University of Washington, 1977 Ph.D., University of Washington, 1982
7 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Symposium Presentation Abstracts
Linda Edwards: “Legal Writing: A Doctrinal Course” - It is common to hear people in the legal academy use the terms “doctrinal” or “substantive” when distinguishing legal writing from other courses. Most other courses our students take are “doctrinal” and “substantive,” while, apparently, ours is not. This paper explores three kinds of questions. First, is legal writing “doctrinal” and “substantive” too? Part of answering that question requires a look at definitions, including a little etymology and social history. The paper will suggest that the answer is “yes.” Second, if we have doctrine and substance, what is it and how was it created? Did the history of its creation affect its content? And if yes, was it for good or for ill? The paper will suggest that the answer is “both” and will explore some of the reasons for where we are and how we got here. Finally, the answers to all of these questions provide many exciting opportunities for legal writing. What might we decide to do going forward? The paper will suggest a few possibilities for shaping the future of legal writing.
Kenneth Chestek: “The Life of the Law Has Not Been Logic: It Has Been Story (with Apologies to Oliver Wendell Holmes)” – It probably comes as no surprise that principles of cognitive psychology are pretty important in persuasive writing. After all, the whole point of persuasive writing is to influence the thinking of the audience (the court). Judges are humans, so understanding how the human brain works is exceedingly useful to brief writers. And since cognitive psychology tells us that stories are central to human thinking, understanding how to present an effective story is essential to persuasive writing.
But that is not to say that the doctrine of legal writing is limited to the course in persuasive writing. Storytelling pervades the law. Not just in the game changer cases like Brown v. Board of Education or Lawrence v. Texas (just two examples of cases where narrative reasoning was essential in order to effect major changes in the law). Storytelling is also embedded in many of what we sometimes think of as the logos rules. Take the law of negligence, for example. It looks like a logos-based, four-element test that is pretty straightforward and easy to apply (duty, breach of duty, proximate cause, damages). Law students are even encouraged to think of it in these simplistic terms. But in practice, how does one prove what the duty is without telling stories about what other human beings typically do in similar circumstances? Or whether an individual’s conduct measures up to, or falls short of, that standard? These applications of the rule involve judgment calls that can be resolved by the factfinder only through narrative reasoning. Similar examples can be found in every “doctrinal” course.
The law does not live by logos alone. Pathos-based narrative reasoning is essential not only in applying the law to individual cases, but also to how judges craft the actual rules to be applied. Many, and probably most, “doctrinal” professors understand this, at least subconsciously. Every time they engage students in policy discussions about why the court changed a rule, they are actually (but maybe not explicitly) discussing how a client’s story was so powerful that it convinced the court of the need for change. Since the
8 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL first-year course in legal writing is as much about legal analysis as it is writing, that course is a perfect opportunity to teach this process explicitly.
Lucille Jewel: “The Doctrine of Legal Writing (Essay Book Review of Readings in Persuasion – Briefs that Changed the World by Linda H. Edwards)” - In legal education, the word “doctrinal” is most often used to refer to core law courses such as Contracts, Torts, Property, and Criminal Procedure. Doctrinal has long been used as a descriptive adjective but also as a word of exclusion – we often hear that legal writing courses are not substantive and are not as significant as doctrinal courses. Linda Edwards’s excellent new book, Readings in Persuasion – Briefs that Changed the World, challenges this view. Undergirded by this book, this essay/book review argues that legal writing should be considered a substantive, doctrinal course.
Upon reading Professor Edwards’s book, one learns that mastering legal writing produces nothing less than law-makers, professional community members vested with the power and ability to shape the structure of legal outcomes that profoundly impact people, things, and society. The collective wisdom radiating from the pages of this book affirms the rewarding and empowering possibilities of law teaching and law practice.
After evaluating what we mean when we use the term doctrinal in a legal education context, this essay considers six powerful descriptors for the doctrine of legal writing, all extrapolated from Edwards’s book: (1) the doctrine of legal writing is founded upon a collective body of robust scholarship; (2) it relies upon principles of science to propel us to a greater understanding of how to best create legal meanings; (3) it embraces an artistic craft model for the production of legal meanings, emphasizing the creativity, autonomy, and discretion that form the core of a lawyer’s professional identity; (4) it necessarily involves a certain amount of critical introspection, opening up areas of thought that are traditionally obscured in legal education and ensuring that law learners appreciate the power that they will eventually wield in law practice; (5) it is substantive because legal writing is law making – we cannot separate the substance of the law from the words we use to forge legal meanings; and finally, (6) because it relies on real cases and context to teach students how to engage with the legal process, the doctrine of legal writing builds and improves upon law school’s classic case-method pedagogy.
Teri McMurty-Chubb: “Toward A Disciplinary Pedagogy for Legal Education” – Both legal educators and non-legal educators share and perpetuate the fallacy that writing exists outside of content and knowledge, outside of doctrine. Both are mistaken that writing is a “generalized” or “transparent” skill attained not through direct discipline specific instruction, but “by a process of slow acculturation through various apprenticeship discourses.” This rupture distinguishes writing in the disciplines from writing outside of the disciplines.
Writing in the Disciplines (WID), a movement located within the larger Writing Across the Curriculum movement, is a formal study of particularized reading and writing practices as they occur in academic disciplines. For WID scholars and adherents, writing and assimilating knowledge are linked; “writing is a way of knowing in the discipline.” Because reading and writing serve as integration points for the study and practice of law, conceptualizing law in a disciplinary context requires legal writing to connect with the
9 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL doctrine of WID. If writing is the core legal skill, then writing doctrine is the foundation of all legal knowledge and inquiry. The doctrine of WID is found in the study of rhetoric, more specifically discourse and genre theory.
My talk will explore WID and its application in legal educational contexts in two parts. Part I is an introduction to discourse and genre theory. Part II discusses how discourse and genre theory serve as bridges between legal and non-legal discourse communities (the communities from which our students come).
J. Christopher Rideout: “Is There a Doctrine of Legal Writing?” In this paper, I offer a response to the question, “Is there a doctrine of legal writing?” My answer, probably the same as that of the other respondents on the panel, is yes. My elaborated answer offers a definition of the doctrine, referencing the rhetorical and linguistic traditions that characterize legal discourse, as well as the pedagogy that we attach to those traditions and the epistemologies that underlie those pedagogies. Following some brief analysis of this answer to the question, the paper will then address three questions: (1) Why do we ask the original question? (2) What are some of the features of the linguistic and rhetorical traditions that we rely on? (3) In attaching pedagogies to our teaching of those traditions, what are some of the underlying epistemological assumptions that we draw upon, and how do those epistemologies contribute to the “doctrine of legal writing”?
Given the time constraints of the panel, my presentation will quickly address the first two questions, but focus primarily on the third.
10 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Conference Presentation Schedule
Saturday, April 27, 2013
ROOM 207 208 210 307 417 418 8:15 – Rhetoric and None Stepped Oral Lessons Using MPTs to Customizing 8:45 Audience - The Presentations Learned in Assess Skills in Textbooks Elephant in the (Contento)* Vietnam and the First Year (Sheppard)* Room Qatar: Best Legal Writing (Blumenfeld)* Practices for Curriculum (Van Teaching Legal Zandt)* Analysis, Research, and Writing to Students from Different Cultural, Socioeconomic, Educational, and Linguistic Backgrounds (Webb)* 9:00 – Anchors Aweigh! The Power of Meta-Metaphor: Bringing Legal Subject-Focused Peer Review 10:00 A New Approach Pathos: Using Clothing Skills Education Legal Writing Across the to Rule Teaching our and Appearance Abroad: Building Classes: What, Curriculum Explanation (R. Students to be to an LRW Why, and How (Montana)** Smith)* Compelling Teach Program at a We Did It (Davis, Storytellers Beginning Law New Law School Long, & Is Pole Dancing (Tsavaris)* Students About in a Foreign Palmer)** Artistic Rhetoric Jurisdiction Expression? Problem Solving: (Gallacher)** (Sturm)** Teaching Law Preparing Law Students to Students to be Write Effective “Client-Ready” Public Policy (Vinson)* Arguments (Nowak)*
11 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL ROOM 207 208 210 307 417 418 10:15 – Say Goodbye to It’s a Matter of Beyond Irac, Effective A View from Both “Researching 11:15 the Books: Character: Using Creac, Creax, Student Sides: with the Information Dahl’s “Lamb to CruPac and The Conferencing Addressing Kardashians”: Literacy as the the Slaughter” Tower of Babel: (Hazelwood)** Student Inability, Developing an New Legal in the Legal How your Legal or Reluctance, to Engaging and Research Writing Writing Transfer Skills Cumulative Paradigm Classroom Paradigm May from LRW Legal Research (Margolis)** (Sneddon)* Be Preventing Classes to Curriculum Critical Thinking Doctrinal (Brown)* Visual (McMurtry- Classes and Vice Storytelling: Chubb)* Versa (Foster & How to Bring Uses and Struffolino)* out the Best in Interpretations of Reckoning with Upper Level Videos in the the “Lawyer’s Integrating Skills Writing Legal Arena Fallacy”: Should into a Sales and Students (and (Pocock)* we Change the Secured Their Seminar Way we Teach Transactions Professors, too) Predictive Legal Classroom (Thornton)* Analysis and (Luna)* Memo Writing? (Osbeck)*
12 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL ROOM 207 208 210 307 417 418 11:30 – Pleading After Deconstructing Academic Getting what you Writing Across You Tell Me: 12:30 Iqbal & the Zong Circles (Gordon, “wished for”: the Law School Student Twombly: Using Massacre: Zimmerman)** How the GSU Curriculum: Conferences as Storytelling Reading the Legal Writing Continued Socratic Dialog Techniques to Rhetoric, Program Lessons from the (Boudreaux & Solve the Writing, and Doubled Its Trenches. Sackey)* “Plausibility” History of the Credit Hours, (Paruch)** Pleading Black Atlantic Reduced Outside Your Standard Puzzle (Sciullo)** Faculty-Student Comfort Zone: (Ralph)* Ratios, and Teaching Tools, Revised Its Exercises, and Ready or Not Curriculum Strategies to Here W-E (Chiovaro & Reach All Come: Vath)** Levels and Mandatory E- Learning Styles filing and Legal (Ridenour & Writing for Spratt)* Digital Media (Harris)*
12:30 – Lunch (Lexis Lunch Lunch Lunch (Westlaw Lunch Lunch (LWI 1:20 presentation) Presentation) (WoltersKluwer New Member Presentation) Gathering) 1:30 – Teaching Expert The Practice is Teaching Soft Rekindling a Fire Please, Preparing 2:30 Argument by Passing Us By: Skills to Law in Students Professor, May I Practice-Ready Translating A Call to Students Burnt Out by the Have Some Students: How Expert Briefs Incorporate (Jaffe)** Bluebook More? Using Seven Weeks (Provenzano)* More (Carpenter)** Digital Video and One “Lucky Technology in Annotation Elephant” Pictures and the Teaching of Software to Transformed Images in Briefs Legal Writing Enhance 1L Oral Twenty-Seven (Schumm)* (Godfrey)** Advocacy Students Into Feedback and Civil Litigators Training (Hoch)* (Baker & Milligan)** Memo Writing in Technicolor (Mika)*
13 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL ROOM 207 208 210 307 417 418 2:45 – An iPad Apps for Does a Legal Warren the Students Gone Millennials as 3:45 Apprenticeship Teaching Legal Writing Test or Whining 1L- A Wild: Tips for Digital Natives Approach: Writing: Exam Make First-Day Handling (Dalton)* Creating Conventional Sense? (Sturm)* CREAC Negative Communities of and Exercise Student Preparing Practice in the Unconventional Retelling the (Fleetham & Situations Students for Classroom to Approaches Story as Legal Tenzer)** (Kellam-Lewis & Practice: Facilitate (Romig)** Remedy Rutledge)** Teaching the Learning (Phelps)* Use of (Lockwood)** Secondary Authority to Advance a Client’s Case (Kaplan)*
14 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Conference Presenters
1. Janice Baker, University of South Carolina School of Law, [email protected] 2. Barbara Blumenfeld, University of New Mexico School of Law, [email protected] 3. Tina Boudreaux, Tulane Law School, [email protected] 4. Heidi Brown, New York Law School, [email protected] 5. Jacob Carpenter, Marquette University Law School, [email protected] 6. Jennifer Groves Chiovaro, Georgia State University College of Law, [email protected] 7. Teri McMurtry-Chubb, Mercer University School of Law, [email protected] 8. Lurene Contento, The John Marshall School of Law, [email protected] 9. Kari Dalton, Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, [email protected] 10. Kristin Davis, Stetson University College of Law, [email protected] 11. Eric Fleetham, Ave Maria School of Law, [email protected] 12. Amanda Foster, Nova Southeastern University, The Shepard Broad Law Center, [email protected] 13. Ian Gallacher, Syracuse University College of Law, [email protected] 14. Douglas William Godfrey, Chicago - Kent College of Law, [email protected] 15. Deborah Gordon, Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, [email protected] 16. Lainie Harris, Dickerson and Gibbons, P.A., Attorneys at Law, [email protected] 17. Kristin Hazelwood, University of Kentucky College of Law, [email protected] 18. Mark Hoch, Charleston School of Law, [email protected] 19. Elizabeth Jaffe, Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, [email protected] 20. Philip C. Kaplan, Suffolk University Law School, [email protected] 21. Shaundra Kellam-Lewis, Thurgood Marshall School of Law-Texas Southern, [email protected] 22. Christina Lockwood, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, [email protected] 23. Lance Long, Stetson University College of Law, [email protected] 24. Bruce G. Luna, II, Atlanta's John Marshall School of Law, [email protected] 25. Ellie Margolis, Temple University, Beasley School of Law, [email protected] 26. Karin Mika, Cleveland - Marshall College of Law, [email protected] 27. Amy Milligan, University of South Carolina School of Law, [email protected] 28. Patricia Montana, St. John's University School of Law, [email protected] 29. Ann Nowak, Touro Law Center, [email protected] 30. Mark Osbeck, University of Michigan Law School, [email protected]
15 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL 31. Jason Palmer, Stetson University College of Law, [email protected] 32. Deborah Paruch, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, [email protected] 33. Teresa Godwin Phelps, American University Washington College of Law, [email protected] 34. Sharon Pocock, Touro Law Center, [email protected] 35. Susan Provenzano, Northwestern University School of Law, [email protected] 36. Anne Ralph, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, [email protected] 37. Heather Ridenour, American University, Washington College of Law, [email protected] 38. Jennifer Romig, Emory Law School, [email protected] 39. Njeri Mathis Rutledge, South Texas College of Law, [email protected] 40. Michael Sackey, Tulane Law School, [email protected] 41. Nick Sciullo, Georgia State University, [email protected] 42. Joel Schumm, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, [email protected] 43. Jennifer Sheppard, Mercer University School of Law, [email protected] 44. Rachel Smith, University of Miami School of Law, [email protected] 45. Karen Sneddon, Mercer University School of Law, [email protected] 46. David Spratt, American University, Washington College of Law, [email protected] 47. Michele Struffolino, Nova Southeastern, Shepard Broad Law Center, [email protected] 48. Conrad Sturm, Qatar University College of Law, [email protected] 49. Wendy Tenzer, Ave Maria School of Law, [email protected] 50. Karen Thornton, The George Washington University Law School, [email protected] 51. Maggie O. Tsavaris, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, [email protected] 52. Victoria L. VanZandt, University of Dayton School of Law, [email protected] 53. Maggie Vath, Georgia State University College of Law, [email protected] 54. Kathleen Elliott Vinson, Professor of Legal Writing, Director of Legal Writing, Research and Written Advocacy, Suffolk University Law School, [email protected] 55. Henry Winder Webb, Qatar University College of Law, [email protected] 56. Emily Zimmerman, Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, [email protected]
16 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Presentation Abstracts
Jan Baker and Amy Milligan, Assistant Directors of Legal Writing, University of South Carolina School of Law, “Preparing Practice-Ready Students: How Seven Weeks and One ‘Lucky Elephant’ Transformed Twenty-Seven Students Into Civil Litigators” – Over four summers, the presenters taught different components of litigation drafting through the two courses of Advanced Legal Writing and Bankruptcy Drafting. In an effort to offer students increased exposure to practical litigation drafting, the presenters created a new course called “Writing in Law Practice.” Enter Flora the elephant. The presenters modeled the course around an actual personal injury case involving the famed Flora the elephant from the documentary “One Lucky Elephant.” Students responded to classified ads and were hired as Associates in civil litigation firms (plaintiff and defense). Next, students worked through pre-trial litigation, from the client interview to the settlement phase of the litigation. Along the way, students drafted file memos, client letters, objective email memoranda, complaints, answers, discovery documents, trial briefs, and settlement documents. Seven weeks later, the result was twenty-seven practice-ready students with developed litigation portfolios.
Tina Boudreaux and Michael A. Sackey, Professors of the Practice, Tulane Law School, “You Tell Me: Student Conferences as Socratic Dialog” – This presentation highlights a new approach to student conferences. In student conferences, the students often want to rely on the professors to make fundamental organizational and writing choices for them. They may expect specific lists of “required cases” or exhaustive line-edits; or perhaps they seek broad guidance on “things I should change.” To encourage students to take greater ownership of their work and prepare for summer jobs, the final conference of the year is structured to simulate a discussion the student might have with a supervising attorney in practice. Moving away from the typical teacher-student dynamic illustrates a junior attorney’s role in the writing process and fosters more self-sufficiency and professional competence in our students. This method creates a Socratic experience, helping students answer their own questions and understand the rationale behind the answers. This presentation will describe how to prepare students for this conference, how to conduct the conference, and the benefits and pitfalls of this approach.
Barbara P. Blumenfeld, Director, Legal Writing Program, University of New Mexico School of Law, “Rhetoric and Audience - The Elephant in the Room” - Much of legal writing is based on principles of rhetoric. Audience plays a crucial role in rhetorical communication; however the immediacy of audience is lost when communication is written rather than oral. Unlike a speaker, the writer does not benefit from audience feedback during the writing process and thus must learn other methods of anticipating audience reaction to the written work. This key difference in audience is often not directly addressed, but its presence is like the elephant in the room: it really cannot, and should not, be ignored. This important acknowledgement for students, teachers and practitioners of legal writing
17 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL suggests a need for methods to compensate and to address this less definable referential skill in order to create a fully effective final written product. Full integration of audience into the writing process provides more satisfaction for the writer and results in more effective written legal communications.
Heidi K. Brown, Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School, “Researching with the Kardashians: Developing an Engaging and Cumulative Legal Research Curriculum” - How do we engage this new generation of law students in the sometimes tedious task of learning legal research skills? Make it fun! This presentation will demonstrate a research practice exercise to get students to use research tools on Westlaw they haven't used before, all by searching for legal documents related to the reality TV family, the Kardashians. Students will search for corporate filings, criminal records, pleadings, briefs, and news articles in the Allnews database, among others. This exercise can easily be adapted to other “pop culture” icons, such as “Researching at the Jersey Shore” or “Researching with the Real Housewives.”
Jacob M. Carpenter, Assistant Professor of Legal Writing, Marquette University Law School, “Rekindling a Fire in Students Burnt Out by the Bluebook” - By spring semester, students tend to be burnt out with the Bluebook and professors could use a creative approach to re-engage them in the learning process. A Bluebook tournament is just the way to spark good-natured competitive interest in the Bluebook. The “games” are run through a fairly complex, interactive PowerPoint program and follow a NCAA “March Madness” theme. The presentation will demonstrate how the tournament operates by having attendees play shortened version of the game. The presenter will also show how professors can either use the games unchanged or adapt the game for their own needs. Further, this game can be used in multiple ways as a single class review, a competition between two class, or a larger scale tournament among multiple classes.
Jennifer Chiovaro and Maggie Vath, Instructors of Law, Georgia State University College of Law, “Getting What You ‘Wished For’: How the GSU Legal Writing Program Doubled its Credit Hours, Reduced Faculty- Student Ratios, and Revised its Curriculum” – This presentation explains the five-year process undertaken by the faculty at GSU to redevelop its curriculum in response to the Carnegie Report. The redeveloped curriculum has resulted in a six-credit two-semester program (three credits per semester) with seven faculty members, each with his or her own GRA. Courses will be taught in two parts – one lecture-type class and one workshop per week. Assignments will range from client interviews, correspondence (email and letters to variety of audiences), memos to files, memoranda, drafting trial and appellate briefs, oral presentations, and oral arguments. Weekly assignments will be assessed by GRAs. The speakers will share their experiences throughout the process of researching and developing the curriculum as well as their insights on how the changes have affected, and will continue to affect, the education of their students.
18 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Teri McMurtry-Chubb, Associate Professor of Law, Mercer University, Walter F. George School of Law, “Beyond Irac, Creac, Creax, CruPac, and The Tower of Babel: How your Legal Writing Paradigm may be Preventing Critical Thinking” - This presentation will explore how formulaic legal writing paradigms can hinder students’ critical thought processes by implicitly encouraging a “fill in the blank” mentality. Good writing, writing that involves critical thinking to build analytical frameworks and apply those analytical frameworks, involves advanced cognitive processes. By employing popular legal paradigms as entry points for teaching novice legal writers, legal writing professionals may be undermining our efforts to get students thinking more deeply about the problem sets we assign. The presentation moves beyond diagnosing the problem to suggest strategies for contextualizing writing instruction in discourse theory to aid student learning.
Lurene Contento, Assistant Professor, Director of the Writing Resource Center, The John Marshall Law School, “Stepped Oral Presentations” - Presenting legal analysis orally is an oft-overlooked skill, but one that is essential in the practice of law. For beginning law students, presenting orally can be especially intimidating. This presentation will discuss a series of oral presentations assigned to students. The series progresses from simple, non-threatening “baby steps” to full-blown presentations to “associates.” Taking students step-by-step allows them to hone both their presentation skills and also their analytical thinking skills.
Kari Mercer Dalton, Associate Professor, Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, “Millennials as Digital Natives” – There is a divide between Millennial generation law students and their Educators – Millennials are digital natives, and their Educators are digital immigrants. This divide affects the educational paradigm in the legal research and analysis courses because the digital natives and the digital immigrants employ different research processes and heuristics. This presentation will first define the characteristics of Millennials (digital natives) and their Educators (digital immigrants). Then, it will explore the two main research processes, traditional (legacy) research and internet (future) research and the heuristics involved in employing those research processes. The presentation will also offer practical solutions for how current Educators can capitalize on the Millennials’ strengths and improve their weaknesses through teaching both legacy and future research and analysis.
Kirsten Davis, Professor of Law and Director of Legal Research and Writing, Lance Long, Associate Professor of Legal Skills, and Jason Palmer, Associate Professor of Legal Skills, Stetson University College of Law, “Subject-Focused Legal Writing Classes: What, Why, and How We Did It” – Last year, these presenters individually taught a second-semester research and writing class each focusing on three different areas of the law: environmental law, elder law, and international law. These courses fulfill the required second-semester advocacy component of Stetson’s legal writing curriculum. The panel will explain and discuss the year-long process of preparing for this unique approach to teaching persuasive legal writing, what they are actually doing, why they
19 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL decided to experiment with a subject-focused approach to legal writing, and, perhaps most interestingly, how the experiment is going!
Eric Fleetham and Wendy Tenzer, Assistant Professors of Research, Writing & Advocacy, Ave Maria School of Law, “Warren the Whining 1L – A First-Day CREAC Exercise” - This presentation demonstrates the “whiny 1L” exercise given to students the first week of class. The exercise is designed to introduce the students to issue spotting, understanding cases, rule extraction, and argument structure. This presentation will offer a refreshing and effective approach to teaching some of the most critical skills law students learn.
Amanda M. Foster and Michele N. Struffolino, Assistant Professors of Law, Nova Southeastern University, The Shepard Broad Law Center, “A View from Both Sides” – This presentation will address student inability, or reluctance, to transfer skills from LRW classes to doctrinal classes and visa-versa and how cross-curricular solutions can offer guidance. As professors who teach both Lawyering Skills and Values courses, as well as a 1L Property course (Professor Struffolino) and a Civil Procedure course (Professor Foster), this gap is seen in both the skills courses and the doctrinal courses. This presentation will offer solutions for how to bridge this gap early on by focusing on the small steps available for those educators who are not teaching at a law school with a cross- curricular focus.
Ian Gallacher, Professor of Law and Director, Legal Communication and Research Program, Syracuse University College of Law, “Meta-Metaphor: Using Clothing and Appearance to Teach Beginning Law Students About Rhetoric” - Many beginning law students are unfamiliar with the concept of rhetoric as a vital communication strategy and can be alienated by what appears to be a vocabulary designed to keep them at arm’s length. This presentation proposes that rather than forcing the issue, legal writing professors might use rhetorical techniques to make rhetoric more accessible. In particular, it proposes that clothing and appearance, and the coded messages our clothing choices send out to others, can be used to introduce students to the idea of sending such messages, and can therefore act as a gentle introduction to the notion of rhetoric. Once the students understand that they already understand how to communicate messages of substance, emotion, and credibility, and how to calibrate those messages precisely, by making and interpreting choices about clothing and appearance, the idea that such messages can also be sent through word choices – and all the other choices that go into formal legal writing – is more comprehensible and less threatening to them.
Douglas Wm. Godfrey, Professor of Legal Research and Writing, Chicago-Kent College of Law, “The Practice is Passing Us By: A Call to Incorporate More Technology in the Teaching of Legal Writing” - The practice of law has been changed by technology. Young lawyers are now creators, transmitters, and custodians of electronically created documents and files. The ABA recently adopted new language for two of its professional rules requiring that lawyers be familiar with the technology they use in their practices. This technology takes many forms; lawyers communicate through smartphones, iPads, social media, and wikis. This presentation will begin with a
20 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL description of how a modern lawyer uses technology. Then, the presenter will suggest some skills needed for these tasks that are not being developed in the traditional first-year curriculum.
Deborah Gordon, Assistant Professor of Law, & Emily Zimmerman, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, “Academic Circles” - This presentation will explore how a professor’s scholarship can inform and enhance the teaching of legal writing and, conversely, how classroom experiences can contribute to a robust academic writing agenda. From three different perspectives (junior/pre-tenure, mid-level/pre- tenure, tenured), the presenters will describe various ways that the legal methods courses taught have evolved as a result of the respective academic interests and writing projects of the presenters.
R. Lainie Wilson Harris, Attorney at Law, Dickinson & Gibbons, PA, “Ready or Not Here W-E Come: Mandatory E-filing and Legal Writing for Digital Media” - This presentation will address mandatory e-filing rules and their implications on zealous advocacy. A natural consequence of these requirements is that judges will not likely regularly print briefs anymore. The presenter will address the requirements of e-filing as well as techniques for persuasively persuading judges through electronic media rather than the printed page.
Kristin Hazelwood, Assistant Professor of Legal Research and Writing, University of Kentucky College of Law, “Effective Student Conferencing” - Conferencing with students is an important component of most legal writing classes. Conferencing, however, is not one-size-fits-all. Professors have a myriad of options in conferencing with students, and the professor should choose carefully among them based on the students’ needs at that point in the course and the particular assignment. This presentation will outline various approaches to conferencing (from speed conferences to live critiquing and individual to small group conferences) and provide suggestions for preparing students to participate actively in each type of conference.
Assistant Dean Mark E. Hoch, Office of Academic Success, Charleston School of Law, “Please, Professor, May I Have Some More? Using Digital Video Annotation Software to Enhance 1L Oral Advocacy Feedback and Training" - Essentially, law students arrive at their legal education somewhere along at least two oral advocacy experience spectra—from little to no experience in oral advocacy to champion debaters and mock/moot court advocates and, in a personal vein, from the truly petrified to do anything in front of any audience to the exuberant, intrinsically self-motivated performer-in-training. Providing feedback across such a range can be daunting, though. Digital Video Annotation Software (DVAS) can enhance and improve 1L oral advocacy feedback and training and with remarkable results. Through DVAS use, LRW professors, LRW Teaching Fellows, and Moot Court Board student members can provide personalized feedback easily and efficiently, thus enhancing the connection between the "expert" providing the meaningful feedback and the "novice" beginning advocate
21 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL attempting to learn from it. In so doing, DVAS use improves both student competence and confidence wherever they may be on the experience and personal spectrums.
Elizabeth Jaffe, Associate Professor, Atlanta’s John Marshall School of Law, “Teaching Soft Skills to Law Students” - The term “soft skills” refers to knowledge and abilities that exist outside of a traditional substantive framework. Cultural commentators have explained that business and professional success requires traditional substantive knowledge, but also requires a nuanced facility with interpersonal communication, etiquette, appropriate assertiveness, and outward demeanor. Soft skills are a necessity for aspiring lawyers because they will soon be entering a professional culture that is both formal and highly competitive. Thus, in the context of legal education, professors have an obligation to convey the substantive knowledge and skills necessary for success, but should also consider spaces where they can talk to students about the unwritten rules that operate in professional legal environments. The presenter will also discuss how to talk about soft skills in a way that respects differences in socio-economic and cultural backgrounds by framing the discussion in pragmatic terms.
Philip C. Kaplan, Associate Professor of Legal Writing, Suffolk University Law School, “Preparing Students for Practice: Teaching the Use of Secondary Authority to Advance a Client’s Case” - Recent law school graduates often feel comfortable with their ability to research the relevant law and write a memorandum. These are skills they have been taught in their first year legal analysis and writing course. Often these skills are reinforced in upper-level electives that have a research and writing component. The difficulty new attorneys have is with the nuts and bolts of litigation—taking a case from demand letter through discovery. Students often are not taught the specifics of how to write a complaint, or how to propound or answer interrogatories, requests for admissions, or requests for production. This presentation will demonstrate to law school faculty how to produce a course, or incorporate into an existing course, the use of secondary authority to teach students how to bring a case though the various stages of litigation by modifying existing material, rather than reinventing it.
Shaundra Kellam-Lewis, Assistant Professor of Legal Writing, Thurgood Marshall School of Law-Texas Southern University, “Students Gone Wild: Tips for Handling Negative Student Situations” - Have any of these things ever happened to you? While you are lecturing, a student bursts into the classroom and serves coffee to a student sitting in the front row. A student misses an exam for what you know is a bogus reason. Another student is repeatedly late to class, and when you comment about their tardiness, they send an email message stating that you disrespected them by “calling them out” for being late. The student at the bottom of your class with a negative attitude has the audacity to ask you for a recommendation. Unfortunately, most teachers have experienced at least one of these situations. This comical presentation discusses how to handle these encounters, as well as how to incorporate teaching professionalism in the classroom.
22 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Christina D. Lockwood, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Legal Writing Program, University of Detroit, Mercy School of Law, “Apprenticeship and Communities of Practice” - This presentation proposes an apprenticeship approach to learning by advocating for cultivating communities of practice in the law school classroom. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, based on their field work investigating how learning occurs in apprenticeships, have found that informal learning occurs through what they call “communities of practice.” The presenter will advocate for adopting the communities of practice model in the law school classroom. Under this model, the novice students would learn by moving from the periphery of the classroom community towards mastering of the course educational objectives through interaction with the professor as an expert and other novice or more advanced student members of the community. The communities of practice model involves students working in groups to learn the course objectives both in and outside of the classroom. Cultivating communities of practice in the law school calls for reform in legal education that both advocates moving away from the traditional heavy reliance on the Socratic method of teaching and, as an alternative, engaging in active and collaborative learning.
Bruce G. Luna II, Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, “Integrating Skills into a Sales and Secured Transactions Classroom” – This presentation will focus on how to integrate the practical skills of transactional lawyering in a doctrinal transactional law course. A “blended” transactional law course should cover the same core legal doctrine as a traditional class while training the students in the practical skills they need to function effectively as transactional lawyers. Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School’s Sales and Secured Transactions class will be used as a case study. During the semester, students draft warranties, prepare security agreements, account control agreements, and UCC-1 financing statements, and write demand letters for adequate assurance of due performance. Under this curriculum, students have the opportunity to see how the UCC is applied in real world situations. The program provides a model for teaching and reinforcing practical skills, which enhances and strengthens students’ abilities to learn and retain the black letter law.
Ellie Margolis, Associate Professors of Law, Temple University, Beasley School of Law, “Say Goodbye to the Books: Information Literacy as the New Legal Research Paradigm” – This presentation focuses on the ever-changing relationship between research, information literacy, and technology. It will draw upon the presenters' recent scholarship in the area as well as the empirical survey of the information literacy of incoming law students. The presentation will involve a discussion of how to bridge the gap between traditional assumptions about teaching research and working with information and current innovations in both because new research instruction techniques need to be considered to prepare students for the reality of current law practice.
Karin Mika, Legal Writing Professor, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, “Memo Writing in Technicolor” - Visuals have become commonplace in the classroom, most prominently in Legal Writing and Research classes.
23 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL This presentation will discuss the use of visuals, particularly color enhancement, in teaching the legal analytical format for a memo. Although highlighting various parts of a memo is not a new teaching methodology, the existence of word processors (and electronic highlighting tools) has enabled teachers to take this tool to a new level. The presentation will demonstrate how the use of color highlighting comparing well-constructed material to poorly-constructed material enhances the ability of students to recognize structural flaws in their own work, and, hopefully remedy the flaws.
Patricia Montana, Professor of Legal Writing, Director of Street Law Program, St. John’s University School of Law, “Peer Review Across the Curriculum” - The presentation will examine the Carnegie and Best Practices Reports’ recommendation that law schools devote more attention to helping students develop the professional skills they will need in practice and propose peer review as an attractive option. Peer review, the process in which law students critique each other’s written work, is a powerful tool to teach students the knowledge, skills, and values essential to becoming competent and professional lawyers. Through peer review, students improve their legal writing and analysis, enhance their editing skills, learn to cooperate with others, manage and evaluate constructive criticism, and develop a deeper appreciation of an audience, among other things. For professors, it is an opportunity to assess their students’ performance and provide additional and useful feedback on their understanding of the legal doctrine and competence in legal analysis and writing.
Ann Nowak, Director of the Writing Center, Touro Law Center, “Is Pole Dancing Artistic Expression? Teaching Law Students to Write Effective Public Policy Arguments” - A recent Court of Appeals case in New York serves as a useful vehicle for teaching students about the effective use of public policy arguments in legal writing. In this case, an attorney for a strip club with pole dancers argued that his client should not have to pay sales tax on admissions receipts because the state’s tax law exempts “dramatic or musical art performances.” The lawyer for the state’s tax department countered that the exemption was intended for performances that are artistic and choreographed—like Broadway shows and ballet. He then argued that even if the pole dancing performances could be considered choreographed, the private dances in the back rooms could not. Questions to be considered by law students are, “What compelling public purpose did lawmakers hope to achieve through the adoption of this tax exemption? And would the inclusion of pole dancing in the protected class help to further the goal of the legislation?”
Mark K. Osbeck, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, “Reckoning with the ‘Lawyer’s Fallacy’: Should We Change the Way We Teach Predictive Legal Analysis and Memo Writing?” - This presentation will encourage participants to re-think and discuss an important area of legal reasoning and pedagogy: namely, how a lawyer should reasonably assess a client’s likelihood of success when dealing with a multi-element cause of action. The “Lawyer’s Fallacy” refers to the conventional view that a client’s
24 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL chances of success on a multi-element cause of action depends upon a determination that each individual element of that cause of action is likely to be satisfied. In fact, due to the peculiarities of probability theory, it will often turn out that a client is actually likely to lose even though each individual element appears to be satisfied. This can have a profound effect on a lawyer’s ability to accurately counsel a client, and it should certainly give us pause to reflect on whether we should incorporate elementary probability theory into our teaching of predictive analysis and memo writing.
Deborah Paruch, Associate Professor of Law, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, “Writing Across the Law School Curriculum: Continued Lessons from the Trenches” – Writing Across the Curriculum has garnered significant scholarly attention. However, the ALWD/LWI data continues to show that law schools are slow to develop these programs. This presentation will address the impediments to implementing a WAC program, discuss potential WAC models, and explore implementation issues. The presenter will describe the process which led to the creation of a successful, coordinated WAC program at her law school. While the presentation will draw on the literature, the presenter will also rely on over a decade of experience with two WAC models, including her role as both a legal writing and casebook faculty member.
Teresa Godwin Phelps, Professor of Law and Director of the Legal Rhetoric Program, American University Washington College of Law, “Retelling the Story as Legal Remedy” - Legal writing teachers often tell students to “characterize the facts,” in other words to tell the story, so as to be persuasive, to win a case for a client. But how the facts are told matter not only to the court in making its decision but also the client as well, who needs an opportunity to have his or her story told and acknowledged. Two recent cases in the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) and in the Inter-American Court dramatically demonstrate how crucial it is to clients to have their stories told by an official legal institution. This presentation will discuss these two instances and analyze what lessons can be derived from them.
Sharon A. Pocock, Associate Professor of Legal Process, Touro College, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, “Visual Storytelling: Uses and Interpretations of Videos in the Legal Arena” - Digital videos play an increasingly greater role in American culture because they are more easily created due to the proliferation and advancement of digital equipment available to almost everyone with a “smart-enough” phone. In addition to photos and videos created on the spur of the moment, surveillance videos also have become more common in 21st- century society and play an increasingly greater role in legal cases. Besides extemporaneous and surveillance videos, which may end up in a legal case, other videos are created expressly to persuade a jury or a judge in the courtroom. The new digital age requires of lawyers a visual literacy – an understanding of how to “read” a video, how to understand what it shows and does not show, and how to create videos and other visual imagery to persuade a legal audience.
25 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL
Sue Provenzano, Senior Lecturer, Northwestern University School of Law, “Teaching Expert Argument by Translating Expert Briefs” - Among the many roles we play as legal writing professors is the role of translator. We strive to make the foreign language of expert legal writing accessible to our novice law students. But as our students become immersed in the legal discourse community, our translations should become more nuanced. For example, we should prepare students for the day when IRAC or CREAC does not supply the organizational answer. One way to tackle this translational task is to draw directly on the work of appellate advocates who have reached the heights of their discipline. With the legal writing professor as facilitative translator, students can analyze appellate briefs to interpret and internalize the argument techniques of expert legal writers. This session will explore how to use expert briefs in an upper-level legal writing course by discussing how to choose expert briefs and design analytical reflection questions that make these briefs “speak” to the students at their level.
Anne Ralph, Assistant Clinical Professor, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, “Pleading after Iqbal & Twombly: Using Storytelling Techniques to Solve the ‘Plausibility’ Pleading Standard Puzzle” - Legal writers must deal with heightened pleading standards in a variety of contexts, including in civil lawsuits governed by the rapidly developing body of law stemming from the Supreme Court’s decisions in Twombly and Iqbal. The presentation will explore the claim that the “plausibility” pleading standard puzzle can be solved by using storytelling techniques and briefly explain and review the plausibility pleading standard. The presenter will then explore the function of storytelling in plausibility pleading cases by presenting a number of storytelling techniques that have been used successfully to overcome the Twombly/Iqbal standard.
Heather Ridenour, Director of Legal Analysis Program, Legal Rhetoric Instructor and David Spratt, Academic Coordinator and Professor of Legal Writing, American University Washington College of Law, “Outside Your Comfort Zone: Teaching Tools, Exercises, and Strategies to Reach All Levels and Learning Styles” - Many students struggle in law school because they have different backgrounds, experiences, and learning styles than some of their peers. Legal writing professors are uniquely positioned to take steps early on, inside and outside the classroom, to help these students through the 1L year and beyond. This presentation will discuss numerous tips, teaching exercises, tools, and resources to help reach nearly every student in the classroom.
Jennifer Romig, Instructor, Legal Writing, Research and Advocacy Program, Emory University School of Law, "iPad Apps for Teaching Legal Writing: Conventional and Unconventional Approaches" – This talk will highlight at least two apps: Doceri and Draw Something. Doceri is an iPad app for creating whiteboard presentations with video. It has been employed to answer common student questions. The response so far has been quite positive. The second app, Draw Something, is a metaphor for communication and can help students
26 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL internalize important ways of thinking about an audience. This presentation will explore the various ways teachers and students can benefit from Draw Something to facilitate a conversation about writing.
Joel M. Schumm, Clinical Professor of Law, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, “Pictures and Images in Appellate Briefs” - Drawing on an empirical study of briefs filed in 2011, this presentation will consider the frequency and propriety of including pictures and images in appellate briefs, as well as the practices of courts in using pictures and images in their opinions. The picture-packed presentation will address techniques for incorporating pictures and images into one’s own writing, and will also provide strategies for deciding when the use of one in a brief is appropriate.
Nick J. Sciullo, Ph.D. Student/Assistant Debate Coach, Department of Communication, Georgia State University, “Deconstructing the Zong Massacre: Reading the Rhetoric, Writing, and History of the Black Atlantic” - The drama of the Zong Massacre presents a unique opportunity for students and scholars of legal writing and rhetoric to investigate the rhetorical importance of the Black Atlantic. By using the Zong as a case study, I will illustrate the ways in which this event can be unpacked to provide valuable insights into legal rhetoric, property law, and slavery. Such case studies can be used in the classroom across legal curricula to bring to life complex notions of legal rhetoric, writing, and history. The representations of the Zong Massacre in writing and painting afford countless opportunities for students to understand the complex ways law and history are intertwined and interpreted. Legal writing scholars will find interest in the ways in which the Zong is referenced textually and how rhetorical choices determine the ways in which legal writing and writing about the law informs thinking about law.
Jennifer Sheppard, Associate Professor of Law, Mercer University, Walter F. George School of Law, “Customizing Textbooks” - This presentation will recommend that legal writing faculty consider taking advantage of the custom publishing option provided by Aspen Publishing (Wolters Kluwer). First, the concept of custom publishing will be described, and second, the presentation will demonstrate why legal writing faculty might want to consider creating a custom text. The presentation will also detail the nuts and bolts of how to create a custom text. Substantively, this presentation will guide professors on how to choose materials to include in the custom text by identifying the pedagogical goals for the course and for each class. Part of the presentation will be devoted to advising professors on the best ways to avoid creating confusion stemming from any gaps in coverage or in the seemingly conflicting approaches used by different sources.
Rachel H. Smith, Lecturer in Law, University of Miami School of Law, “Anchors Aweigh! A New Approach to Rule Explanation” - This presentation will offer a teaching solution for legal writing professors who are looking to guide students towards writing useful rule explanations and away from writing overly detailed, aimless, and often
27 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL irrelevant case illustrations. By teaching students how to identify the explicit and implicit “anchors” that ground the applicable court opinions, students can learn to explain the rules without resorting to writing mini-case briefs that interrupt and derail their legal analysis. This presentation will describe the theory underlying this new approach, offer teaching materials for how to introduce it to students, and dissect examples of effective and not-so-effective student work.
Karen J. Sneddon, Associate Professor of Law, Mercer Law School, Walter F. George School of Law, “It’s a Matter of Character: Using Dahl’s 'Lamb to the Slaughter' in the Legal Writing Classroom” - A narrative provides the writer with a structure to bundle information in a reader-accessible manner. Arguably the most critical component of a narrative is character. With students from a variety of disciplines, a conversation on narrative can quickly become overly abstract and attenuated from legal writing. To that end, this presentation will showcase how to use one of the most famous short stories by the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach to spark enthusiasm for the potential of narratives and provide examples of a compelling character driven narrative. This interactive presentation will cast the audience in the role of students to simulate the legal writing classroom.
Conrad Sturm, Director, Legal Writing and Advocacy Skills Programme, Qatar University College of Law, “Bringing Legal Skills Education Abroad: Building an LRW Program at a New Law School in a Foreign Jurisdiction” - As legal skills education has risen to prominence in the U.S., law school educators abroad have taken note and contemplated whether legal skills education belongs in their classrooms. In 2010, after much contemplation and with the guidance of institutions like the ABA, the Qatar University College of Law decided to bring an LRW program to its Bachelor of Laws degree. This presentation will focus on the lessons learned while developing the legal writing program. It will specifically address discrete topics like building a strong team, staffing models, curriculum design, pedagogical and assessment methods, working with the law school and university administration, and dealing with the unexpected.
Conrad Sturm, Director, Legal Writing and Advocacy Skills Programme, Qatar University College of Law, “Does a Legal Writing Test or Exam Make Sense?” - The presenter relays his experience of administering a test in a legal writing course for the first time. The idea for the test was spurred by concerns of student plagiarism and that students were not investing enough time in learning the fundamentals of strong legal analysis and structured writing. The purpose of the test, therefore, was to ensure that students learned the fundamentals of strong legal analysis and structured writing. Another driving rationale was to provide students an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the essentials so that they would feel more confident in writing memo submissions on their own. This presentation will describe the legal writing test and the pros and cons of administering it.
28 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Karen D. Thornton, Associate Professor of Legal Writing, Coordinator, Scholarly Writing Program, The George Washington University Law School, “How to Bring out the Best in Upper Level Writing Students (and Their Seminar Professors, too)” - Experience has shown that faculty supervising seminar papers or independent legal writing are often disappointed with their students' written work product. This impression appears to have created some reluctance to engage in supervising student writers. This presentation will tell the story of how to forge a connection with faculty who teach seminars and convince them to adopt legal writing teaching techniques to ensure a more enjoyable and successful supervisory experience. In the writing courses (both required and elective) designed for students writing notes, theses, and seminar papers, the presenter employs composition theory and peer review to teach students how to master an otherwise daunting experience and produce their very best work. Numerous students have published their final papers, and all have become more practice-ready by further refining their writing skills.
Maggie O. Tsavaris, Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor of Law, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, “The Power of Pathos: Teaching our Students to be Compelling Storytellers” – Pathos applies not only to our writing and analysis but also to our pedagogy. This presentation focuses on introducing concepts and creating exercises that invite our students to be passionate about what they are learning. I will explore a variety of ways to engage our students with special attention to inspiring them through “Quotes of the Day” and guiding them with storytelling exercises to establish a deeper connection to the hypothetical client.
Victoria L. VanZandt, Professor of Lawyering Skills, University of Dayton School of Law, “Using MPTs to Assess Skills in the First Year Legal Writing Curriculum” - This presentation will discuss using an MPT (Multistate Performance Test) in the first year legal writing curriculum. The presentation will also address the basic questions concerning the use of MPTs: what, why, when, where, and how. The presenter will draw from literature about the MPT as well as personal experiences and those of colleagues who have used the MPT in their classes.
Kathleen Elliott Vinson, Professor of Legal Writing, Director of Legal Writing, Research and Written Advocacy, Suffolk University Law School, “Problem Solving: Preparing Law Students to be “Client-Ready” – This presentation will discuss how problem solving can help students prepare for the practice of law and enhance their development as legal professionals. I will discuss the problem solving course I teach, which gives students the opportunity to confront different kinds of client problems in different legal settings, and attempt to solve them the way lawyers do in practice under time constraints. I will explain the goals, learning objectives, and assessments I use for hands-on, collaborative learning, which requires students to actively apply problem solving methodology, utilizing legal research, writing, and oral communication skills.
29 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Henry Webb, Lecturer, Legal Writing and Advocacy Skills Programme, Qatar University College of Law, “Lessons Learned in Vietnam and Qatar: Best Practices for Teaching Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing to Students from Different Cultural, Socioeconomic, Educational, and Linguistic Backgrounds” - As a result of the increasing globalization of legal education, many legal writing professors find themselves teaching legal analysis, research, and writing skills to students from different, cultural, socioeconomic, educational, and linguistic backgrounds. Some of these “nontraditional” students may not have a firm grasp of legal concepts which are relatively common in western culture (such as “brief,” “evidence,” “litigation,” “negligence,” or even “lawsuit”) and may have had very little, if any, experience with any form of structured analysis, research, and writing. This presentation will build on the presenter’s experience teaching legal writing in Vietnam and Qatar and demonstrate various methods that are effective in teaching foreign students from educational systems based almost entirely on rote learning. The goal of the presentation is to provide conference attendees with a set of best practices for effectively teaching those skills to students – both international and domestic - from diverse and nontraditional backgrounds.
30 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Conference Sponsors
We would like to extend a special thanks to the following sponsors for their support and contributions without which this event would not have been possible:
31 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013
Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference
SAVANNAH LAW SCHOOL Conference Sponsors
We would like to extend a special thanks to the following sponsors for their support and contributions without which this event would not have been possible:
The Savannah Law School Student Bar Association
Warnock & Mackey Attorneys at Law
32 Hosted by Savannah Law School, Savannah, Georgia – April 26 – 27, 2013