Articles with Writing Tips
- Write to Counsel SeriesThe legal writing faculty at UW Law contribute articles to a regular column in the Washington State Bar Association’s magazine, Washington State Bar News (formerly NWLawyer). That column—titled “Write to Counsel”—covers issues relevant to practicing attorneys, students, judges or anyone interested in effective legal writing.
Research on Academic Writing
Air and Light and Time and Space: How Successful Academics Write by Publication Date: 2017Ebook. Also available in print.
Helen Sword interviewed 100 academics worldwide about their writing background and practices and shows how they find or create the conditions to get their writing done.
Stylish Academic Writing by Publication Date: 2012Ebook. Also available in print.
The author studied hundreds of articles from 10 academic disciplines (including law) and interviewed authors who were recognized by their peers as great writers. The result is a book that offers good advice, backed up by data and illustrated with wonderful examples.
Publisher's page links to the author's TED Ed video on "zombie nouns," as well as other material.
Research on Legal Writing
Fiction and the Languages of Law: Understanding Contemporary Legal Discourse by Call Number: Gallagher Law Library Classified Stacks KF250 .P48 2019Publication Date: 2018Print.
"Focusing on linguistic and rhetorical patterns in the dozens of reasoned opinions issued by the Court between October 2014 and June 2015, the book takes nonlawyer readers on a lively tour of contemporary American legal reasoning and acquaints legal readers with some surprising features of their own thinking and writing habits." The author "reframes a number of long-running legal debates, identifies other related paradoxes within legal discourse, and traces them all to common sources: judges' and lawyers' habit of alternating unselfconsciously between two different attitudes toward the language they use, and a set of professional biases that tends to prevent scrutiny of that habit." -- Publisher
The Science Behind the Art of Legal Writing, 2d ed. by Call Number: Gallagher Law Library Reference Area LC K94 .C358 2019Publication Date: 2019Print.
"What evidence exists to support the advice that legal writing professors offer their students? For example, do legal readers really prefer short sentences and the active voice? Is outlining the best way to start a memo or brief? Can a certain font type make a brief more persuasive? Is deductive reasoning the most effective form of legal reasoning? Will a legal writer view the use of the word 'clearly'' with skepticism? Are judges annoyed by minor grammatical errors or typos? . . . This text provides easy access to research in the form of social psychological experiments, statistical analyses, and surveys (some done by others and some done by the authors), which suggest that much of the advice given to legal writing students is backed by solid science."--Back cover
Legal Writing Journals
The journals below contain scholarly and practical articles about diverse aspects of legal writing and legal research. One journal (Perspectives) focuses primarily on theories and techniques for teaching legal writing and legal research—i.e., the pedagogy of legal writing and legal research. The other journals cover a range of topics and issues involved in various types of legal writing, such as persuasive briefs, predictive legal memos, and drafting contracts or statutes.
Legal Communications & Rhetoric: JALWD [website] [HeinOnline] [Westlaw]
Published by the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD)
From the ALWD website:
- The mission of ALWD "is to advance the study of professional legal writing and lawyering and to become an resource and a forum for conversation between the legal practitioner and the legal writing scholar."
- "The Journal is dedicated to encouraging and publishing scholarship (1) focusing on the substance and doctrine of legal writing. Legal writing is broadly defined to include many types of writing in a lawyering setting; (2) grounded in legal doctrine, empirical research, or interdisciplinary theory; and (3) accessible, helpful and interesting to all 'do-ers' of legal writing: attorneys, judges, law students, and legal academicians. Published articles are intended to reach all of those audiences."
Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute [website] [HeinOnline] [Westlaw]
Published by the Legal Writing Institute (LWI)
From the LWI website:
- "The goal of the Legal Writing Institute is to encourage a broader understanding of legal writing and the teaching of it."
- "The Legal Writing Institute established Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute in 1988 to showcase the developing discipline of legal writing. The Journal’s mission is to provide a forum for the publication of scholarly articles about the theory, substance, and pedagogy of legal writing. Unlike most law reviews, which are student-edited, the Journal is peer-reviewed. Our Editorial Board is composed of faculty from law schools across the country and includes some of the leading scholars and academics in the field of legal writing."
Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing [website] [HeinOnline] [Westlaw]
Published by Thomson Reuters
From the Perspectives website:
- "Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing is an electronic journal published by Thomson Reuters two times a year for legal research and writing instructors and law firm and law school librarians. The journal provides a forum for discussing the teaching of legal research and writing, focusing on research materials, tools and theories. Among the subjects frequently covered in Perspectives are trends in electronic legal research; solutions to legal research problems; and recently published legal research and writing resources."
- Sign up to receive a free subscription to Perspectives
Scribes Journal of Legal Writing [website] [HeinOnline] [Westlaw]
Published by Scribes—the American Society of Legal Writers
From the Scribes website:
- "The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing is a publication of Scribes—The American Society of Legal Writers."
- "The Journal publishes articles, essays, notes, and other pieces on all facets of legal writing. Our readers include lawyers, judges, academicians, writing instructors, and a wide range of others interested in improving legal writing."