Announcements

The Legal Writing Institute is a nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to exchange ideas about legal writing and to provide a forum for research and scholarship about legal writing and legal analysis. The Institute is currently housed at Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Georgia.

The Institute promotes new activities through a newsletter, published twice a year; a scholarly journal, published about once a year; and a national conference that has been held every other year since 1984. It has also sponsored several international conferences on legal writing. It annually offers a writer's workshop for developing scholars in the field.

The Institute has close to 2000 members representing all the ABA-accredited law schools in the United States. The Institute also has members from other countries, as well as from English departments, independent research-and-consulting organizations, and the practicing bar. Anyone who is interested in legal writing or the teaching of legal writing may join the Institute.

Membership is free. To join, click on the membership link on LWI's website at http://www.lwionline.org/


Table of Contents

Winning Oral Argument: Do's and Don'ts

Gerald Lebovits, St. John's University - School of Law, Columbia University - Law School

Watch, Listen, and Learn

Kathleen Elliott Vinson, Suffolk University Law School

The Cartography of Legal Inquiry

Tonya Kowalski, Washburn University School of Law

LEGAL WRITING ABSTRACTS
Sponsored by the Legal Writing Institute

"Winning Oral Argument: Do's and Don'ts" Free Download
Queens Bar Bulletin, Vol. 72, No. 2, p. 1, November 2008

GERALD LEBOVITS, St. John's University - School of Law, Columbia University - Law School
Email:

This article discusses how to give an effective oral argument in court.

"Watch, Listen, and Learn" Free Download
Suffolk Law Alumni Magazine, p. 40, Fall 2008

KATHLEEN ELLIOTT VINSON, Suffolk University Law School
Email:

Technology impacts education - the way faculty teach and students learn. For example, faculty members utilize technology in the classroom to engage students and assess their understanding. Some examples of technological tools professors use in class include audience response system (clickers). Outside of the classroom, technology supplements classroom instruction without time and space constraints. For instance, professors record podcasts to review material and critique student memoranda. This article discusses some of the technology tools utilized by faculty and students.

"The Cartography of Legal Inquiry" Free Download

TONYA KOWALSKI, Washburn University School of Law
Email:

As lifelong learners, we all know the feelings of discomfort and bewilderment that can come from being asked to apply existing skills in a completely new situation. As legal educators, we have also experienced the frustration that comes from watching our students struggle to identify and transfer skills from one learning environment to another. For example, a first-semester law student who learns to analogize case law to a fact pattern in a legal writing problem typically will not see the deeper applications for those skills in a law school essay exam several weeks later. Similarly, when law students learn how an equitable doctrine like "unclean hands" applies to a particular torts problem in one class, only the smallest percentage will then see the potential application for the doctrine in a contracts course with another professor. Fortunately, research in “transfer of learning� offers the legal academy tools to help students encode knowledge - whether doctrine or skills - in such a way that they know better when and how to retrieve it for later use.

This Article-in-Progress is the first to offer legal educators a comprehensive approach to the transfer of learning across the entire curriculum. It is also the first to propose that law schools employ schema theory to help students encode knowledge and skills for future transfer, as well as to conceptually integrate their courses. In the sample schema provided, students can use four categories of specific core lawyering skills as “constants� for navigating their coursework and employment. Finally, the author details a four-step “core skills approach� for aiding transfer, including the core skills schema; charts that show how various skill sets apply across the curriculum; a universal metacognitive reflection exercise; and additional sample exercises tailored to cue previous knowledge across conceptual bridges, such as the one that spans the distance from legal writing courses into clinic.

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Solicitation of Abstracts

The Legal Writing Institute's SSRN Journal provides a forum for posting both completed works and works in progress that relate to all issues in the legal writing field. The journal seeks articles that cover topics including (1) effective ways to teach legal writing; (2) the doctrine of legal writing and lawyering, including persuasive and effective techniques; (3) legal research; (4) oral communication and advocacy; and (5) other related topics to legal writing.

To submit your research to SSRN, log in to the SSRN User HeadQuarters, and click on the My Papers link on the left menu, and then click on Start New Submission at the top of the page.

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If your organization is interested in increasing readership for its research by starting a Research Paper Series, or sponsoring a Subject Matter eJournal, please email: RPS@SSRN.com

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Legal Scholarship Network (LSN), a division of Social Science Electronic Publishing (SSEP) and Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

Directors

LSN SUBJECT MATTER EJOURNALS

A. MITCHELL POLINSKY
Stanford Law School, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Email: polinsky@stanford.edu

BERNARD S. BLACK
University of Texas at Austin - School of Law, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), Northwestern University - School of Law, Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management
Email: bblack@law.utexas.edu

RONALD J. GILSON
Stanford Law School, Columbia Law School
Email: rgilson@leland.stanford.edu

Please contact us at the above addresses with your comments, questions or suggestions for LSN-Sub.

Advisory Board

Legal Writing

COLEEN M. BARGER
Associate Professor of Law, UALR William H. Bowen School of Law

MARY BETH BEAZLEY
Associate Professor of Law, Ohio State University - Michael E. Moritz College of Law

LINDA L. BERGER
Professor of Law, Mercer University School of Law

ROBIN BOYLE
Professor of Legal Writing, Coordinator of Academic Support Program, Assistant Director of Writing Center, St. John's University School of Law

LINDA H. EDWARDS
Macon Professor of Law, Mercer University School of Law

KRISTIN GERDY
Professor and Director, Rex E. Lee Advocacy Program, J. Reuben Clark Law School, BYU

LAUREL OATES
Professor and Director of Legal Writing, Seattle University School of Law

TERRILL POLLMAN
Ralph Denton Professor of Law , William S. Boyd School of Law UNLV

RUTH ANNE ROBBINS
Clinical Professor of Law, Rutgers School of Law - Camden

LOUIS J. SIRICO
Professor of Law, Director of Legal Writing, Villanova University School of Law

MICHAEL R. SMITH
Winston S. Howard Distinguished Professor of Law & Director of Legal Writing, University of Wyoming College of Law

KATHRYN STANCHI
Associate Professor of Law, Temple University - James E. Beasley School of Law

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