Posted in Law Students, Legal Research & Writing on May 8th, 2013
Punctuation – the commas, periods, apostrophes, hyphens, columns and semi-columns are all often the source of a headache. The topic of punctuation is certain to be part of the 1L writing instruction. It is not only the writing instructors emphasizing the need to pay attention to detail and use punctuation correctly, but it is also the [...]
Posted in Law Students, Legal Research & Writing, Professional Responsibility on Sep 10th, 2012
Via the (new) legal writer blog post titled Cite Right, take a look at an article in the New York Law Journal, The Fine Art of (Persuasively) Citing Cases written by Harry Steinberg. The article shows that citation matters; and it matters a lot. Mr. Steinberg focuses on New York practice and uses examples of [...]
Posted in Law Students, Legal Research & Writing on Mar 31st, 2012
Attention all law students! Looking to distinguish yourself as you enter the internship and/or job market? One of the best and easiest ways to get yourself noticed by prospective supervisors and employers is to get an article published while you are still in law school. The benefits of getting published are many as a well [...]
Posted in Law Students, Legal Research & Writing on Aug 19th, 2011
Via the (new) legal writer blog, the following is a an interesting post about how many spaces should follow a period. Jay Shepard’s article Small Firms, Big Lawyers: A Period Piece addresses and answers the question of whether a period should be followed by one or two spaces, but particularly, he highlights the importance of [...]
Posted in Law and Technology, Law Students, Legal Research & Writing on Jun 10th, 2011
After endless hours of researching, reading, drafting and re-writing an appellate brief, the last step is to format it. That usually requires to insert the pagination, table of contents, and table of authorities. But by that time, the deadline is close and the energy is low. So, to save writers a little bit of time [...]
Posted in Law Students, Legal Research & Writing on May 10th, 2011
Some of the recent additions to the Pace Law Library legal writing collection include: Terri LeClerq & Karin Mika, Guide to Legal Writing (2011). KF250 .L43 2011 Eugene Volokh, Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review (2010). KF250 .V65 2010 Mary Barnard Ray & Jill J. Ramsfield, Legal Writing: Getting It [...]
Posted in Legal Research & Writing, Professional Responsibility on Mar 11th, 2011
In another ABA Journal posting a Massachusetts lawyer was reprimanded by the State’s Board of Bar Overseers for failing to include ellipses when removing language from a quotation. The lawyer presented a brief in which the statement of facts consisted of a quote from the court below. This implied that the quote included all of the facts [...]
Posted in Legal Research & Writing, Professional Responsibility on Mar 11th, 2011
In a recent 7th Circuit case, the court affirmed a lower court decision holding that the appellant had submitted a rambling brief that far exceed the Court’s 14,000 word limit. An ABA Journal posting quotes the opinion written by Judge Posner “The flagrancy of the violation in this case might well justify the dismissal of the appeal: [...]
Posted in Legal Research & Writing on Jun 1st, 2010
This month’s NYSBA Journal includes a tongue-in-cheek article by Judge Gerald Lebovits on writing bad briefs. An excerpt: Miscite your authorities. Get the volume of the reporter right, but forget page numbers. Close enough is good enough, unless your goal is to lose by winning. If a decision is longer than one page, never give [...]
Posted in Legal Research & Writing on Jan 14th, 2010
Via the (new) legal writer, Raymond Ward posted How to draft more understandable jury instructions. Jury instructions are too often so poorly written that even the most intelligent juror cannot understand them. That’s a serious problem. So how can we make jury instructions more understandable? Prof. Peter Tiersma offers many concrete suggestions in this article, [...]
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