Presentation and Publication
This issue’s essays are drawn from presentations at the 2023 biennial conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. The first essay shares a pedagogical approach to deepen students’ analytical skills. The second encourages legal writing professors to develop their ideas, perhaps from conference presentations, to publish as short scholarly works. The final essay is actually a skit; it takes a lighthearted approach to explain the benefits of the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation. This issue concludes with a short bibliography of links to websites and articles on making effective conference presentations, with hopes of inspiring newer professors to present at regional and national conferences and reinvigorating those who have presented for years.
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Featured Essays
Plug and Play: Teaching Analogical Reasoning with a Spark
KATRINA ROBINSON & KRISTEN STANLEY
Analogical reasoning is a foundational skill in the first-year legal writing course, but it is one that students often struggle to gain proficiency in. Despite our best efforts to teach this skill, classic errors seem to appear in students’ analogical arguments throughout the school year. For example, at the beginning of the year, students often highlight facts that aren’t legally relevant. As the year continues, students progress to successfully identifying legally significant facts, but then forget to “show their work,” meaning they forget to explain how and why the facts from a binding case compare to facts in their client’s case. Read full essay...
The Beauty of Shorts: Ten Tips on Writing a Publishable Short piece
Robin Boyle-Laisure and Brooke J. Bowman
Based upon our experience serving on editorial boards of peer-reviewed law journals for over twenty years combined, we encourage faculty who teach legal research and writing to write short scholarly pieces. While books have been written on how to write scholarly articles, and law schools offer students courses on writing journal articles, there is little information about how to write a scholarly piece that is short. This Essay fills that gap and provides advice for constructing a publishable short. Read full essay...
Citation Myth-Busters: The Truth about Choice, Simplicity, and Support
Carolyn Williams
[T]he ALWD Guide to Legal Citation is a textbook that teaches law students how to cite legal and non-legal sources, both in documents written by practitioners and in articles and books written for academic purposes. The ALWD Guide was conceived of by legal writing professors, and it has been written and edited by numerous legal writing professors, all of whom are recognized in the acknowledgements for all seven editions. The authors have been Darby Dickerson, Coleen Barger, and Carolyn Williams. The Guide was first published in April 2000, and… Read full essay...
Bibliography: Making Professional Presentations
Dana McHenry
Legal writing professors might be assumed to be natural at making presentations. After all, they regularly lead classes, and they teach students to make presentations ranging from office discussions with supervisors to appellate arguments before courts. But making a presentation before national colleagues is a slightly different event, and new teachers might be reluctant to put themselves in the limelight. This short bibliography provides links to websites and articles that guide novices (and remind experienced presenters) on how to prepare and present professional conference presentations. Read full essay...