Academic Legal Writing

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ISBN: 9781587787928 | 158778792X
Cover: Paperback
Copyright: 12/31/2004

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Designed to help law students write and publish articles, Academic Legal Writing provides detailed instructions for every aspect of the law school writing, research, and publication process. Topics covered include law review articles and student notes, seminar term papers, how to shift from research to writing, cite-checking others? work, publishing, and publicizing written works. With supporting documents available on http://volokh.com/writing, the book helps law students and everyone else involved in academic legal writing: professors save time and effort communicating basic points to students; law schools satisfy the American Bar Association?s second- and third-year writing requirements; and law reviews receive better notes from their staff.

Foreword

(4)

Judge Alex Kozinski

Introduction

(3)

Acknowledgments

(1)

Articles and Student Notes: The Basics

(54)

The Initial Step: Choosing a Claim

(23)

The Claim

(4)

Novelty

(1)

Nonobviousness

(1)

Utility

(4)

Soundness

(9)

Selling This to Your Readers

(1)

Topics and Structures You Should Generally Avoid

(3)

Case Notes

(1)

Organizing the Article

(16)

Write the Introduction

(4)

Explain Background Facts and Legal Doctrines

(3)

Prove Your Claim

(3)

Make Your Article Richer: Connect to Broader Issues, Parallel Issues, and Subsidiary Issues

(5)

Rewrite the Introduction

(1)

The Conclusion

(1)

Turning Practical Work into Articles

(4)

Extract

(1)

Deepen

(1)

Broaden

(1)

Connect

(1)

Budgeting Your Time

(2)

Deciding What to Set Aside

(2)

Choosing a Title

(4)

Summary

(3)

Choose a Topic

(1)

Make a Claim

(1)

Write a First Draft

(1)

Edit

(1)

Publish and Publicize

(1)

Think About Your Next Article

(1)

Seminar Term Papers

(5)

Introduction: Comparing Seminar Term Papers and Academic Articles

(1)

Nonobviousness

(1)

Soundness

(1)

Writing and Structure

(1)

Utility

(1)

Novelty

(1)

Figuring Out What Your Instructor Expects

(1)

Finding a Topic

(1)

Budgeting Your Time

(1)

Turning the Paper into a Publishable Article

(2)

Research

(5)

Identifying Sample Cases and Incidents

(1)

Understanding the Law

(3)

Get the Big Picture

(1)

Get the Details

(1)

Find Other Works on the Topic (the Literature Search)

(1)

Knowing When to Start Writing

(1)

Writing

(28)

There Are No Lazy Readers---Only Busy Readers

(1)

Go Through Many Drafts

(1)

If You See No Red Marks on a Paragraph, Go over It Again

(1)

If You Need To Reread Something To Understand It, Rewrite It

(1)

Read the Draft with ``New Eyes''

(2)

Finish the First Draft Quickly/Defeat Writer's Block by Skipping Around

(1)

React Effectively to Editing Suggestions

(1)

Use Subsection Headings

(1)

Use a Table of Contents

(1)

Note Down All Your Ideas

(1)

Things to Look for: Logic

(5)

Categorical Assertions

(1)

Insistence on Perfection

(1)

False Alternatives

(1)

Missing Pieces

(1)

Criticisms That Could Apply to Everything

(1)

Metaphors

(1)

Undefined Terms

(1)

Undefended Assertions, and ``Arguably''/``Raises Concerns''

(1)

Things to Look for: Writing

(13)

Paragraphs Lacking a Common Theme

(1)

Long Paragraphs

(1)

Inadequate Connections Between Paragraphs

(1)

Redundancy

(1)

Unnecessary Introductory Clauses

(1)

Other Unnecessary Phrases

(2)

Legalese/Bureaucratese

(1)

Unnecessary Abstractions

(2)

Passive Voice

(1)

Cliches

(1)

Figurative Phrases

(3)

Unduly Harsh Criticism

(1)

Personalized Criticism

(1)

Abbreviations

(1)

Word Choice Errors

(1)

Proofreading

(1)

Editing: Three Exercises

(3)

Basic Editing

(1)

Editing for Concreteness

(2)

Using Evidence Correctly

101

(46)

Read, Quote, and Cite the Original Source

101

(9)

Legal Evidence

101

(3)

Historical, Economic, or Scientific Evidence

104

(1)

Newspapers

105

(3)

Transcripts

108

(1)

Web Sites

109

(1)

Check the Studies on Which You Rely

110

(1)

Compromise Wisely

111

(1)

Be Careful with the Terms You Use

112

(2)

Avoid False Synonyms

112

(1)

Include All Necessary Qualifiers

113

(1)

Use Precise Terms Rather Than Vague Ones

114

(1)

Try To Avoid Foreseeable Misunderstandings

114

(1)

Understand Your Source

115

(2)

Handle Survey Evidence Correctly

117

(10)

What Do Surveys Measure?

117

(1)

Errors in Generalizing from the Respondents to a Broader Group

118

(3)

Errors in Generalizing from the Question Being Asked

121

(3)

Errors Caused by Ignoring Information from the Same Survey

124

(1)

Respondents Giving Incorrect Answers to Pollsters

125

(1)

An Exercise

126

(1)

Be Explicit About Your Assumptions

127

(11)

Inferring from Correlation to Causation

128

(2)

Extrapolating Across Places, Times, or Populations

130

(6)

Inferring from One Variable to Another

136

(1)

A Summary plus an Exercise

137

(1)

Make Sure Your Comparisons Make Sense

138

(6)

Consider Alternative Explanations for Disparities

138

(2)

Make Sure That Cost/Benefit Comparisons Sensibly Quantify Costs and Benefits

140

(1)

Say How Many Cases the Comparison Is Based on, and How Small Changes in Selection May Change the Result

140

(4)

A Source-Checking Exercise

144

(2)

Summary

146

(1)

Cite-Checking Others' Articles

147

(3)

Recommendations for Cite-Checkers

147

(2)

Recommendations for Law Review Editors

149

(1)

Publishing and Publicizing

150

(21)

Consider Publishing Outside Your School

150

(10)

You Can

150

(1)

You Should

150

(2)

Here's How

152

(8)

Working with Law Journal Editors

160

(7)

Have the Right Attitude About Edits

160

(2)

Insist on Seeing All Changes

162

(1)

Always Keep a Copy of Any Marked-Up Draft You Mail

163

(1)

Make Sure Your Earlier Changes Were Properly Entered

163

(1)

Use the Opportunity To Edit More Yourself

163

(1)

Keep the Copyright, but Grant Nonexclusive Rights

164

(3)

Publicizing the Article Before It's Published

167

(1)

Publicizing the Published Article

167

(2)

Reprints

167

(1)

Distributing the Article Electronically

168

(1)

Planning the Next Article

169

(2)

Entering Writing Competitions

171

(6)

Why You Should Do This

171

(1)

Competitions That Don't Offer Publication

171

(1)

Competitions That Guarantee Publication

172

(2)

Competitions That Offer a Chance for Publication

174

(1)

Competitions That Solicit Published Pieces

175

(1)

Competitions That Solicit Unpublished Pieces

175

(2)

Getting on Law Review

177

(32)

What Is a Law Review?

177

(1)

Why Be on a Law Review?

178

(1)

Which Law Review?

179

(1)

``Making Law Review''

180

(1)

Writing On: Background

181

(4)

What the competitions are like

181

(1)

Begin before the competition starts

182

(3)

Writing On: A Timeline for After You Start

185

(22)

Read the instructions

185

(1)

Photocopy

186

(1)

Read the assignment and the source materials

186

(1)

Choose a claim

187

(2)

If you can't find the perfect claim, go with what you have

189

(1)

Do the editing/proofreading/bluebooking test (if there is one)

189

(2)

Write a rough draft of the paper, quickly

191

(6)

Use the sources effectively

197

(3)

Ignore the mid-competition blues

200

(1)

Edit

200

(3)

If you have time, reread this section and the Writing section

203

(1)

What to do if you're over the page limit

203

(2)

Near the end

205

(2)

Special Suggestions for Case Notes

207

(1)

The Personal Statement

207

(2)

Write well and proofread carefully

207

(1)

Pay attention to the instructions

207

(1)

Make yourself sound interesting, but politically unthreatening

208

(1)

If you're applying to a specialty journal, stress your interest or experience in the specialty

208

(1)

Academic Ethics

209

(9)

Avoiding Plagiarism

209

(4)

The Two Harms of Plagiarism

209

(1)

Your Obligations

210

(2)

Copying from Yourself

212

(1)

Being Candid

213

(1)

Being Fair and Polite to Your Adversaries

213

(1)

Being Fair to the Law Review Editors Who Publish Your Article

214

(1)

Preserving Confidentiality

214

(1)

Treating Sources Fairly

215

(1)

Making Data Available

216

(2)

Conclusion

218

(1)

APPENDIX I: CLUMSY WORDS AND PHRASES

219

(7)

Needlessly Formal Words

219

(3)

Verbs

219

(2)

Nouns

221

(1)

Adjectives, Adverbs, Conjunctions, and Prepositions

221

(1)

Circumlocutions

222

(3)

Generally

222

(2)

Verbs Turned into Nouns or Adjectives

224

(1)

``The Fact That''

225

(1)

Redundancies

225

(1)

APPENDIX II: ANSWERS TO EXERCISES

226

(18)

Editing Exercises

226

(8)

Basic Editing, p. 98

226

(5)

Editing for Concreteness, p. 99

231

(3)

Understand Your Source, p. 116

234

(2)

USA Today Survey Report, p. 126

236

(1)

Drunk Driving Study, p. 138

237

(1)

Source-Checking Exercise, p. 144

238

(6)

The First Claim

239

(2)

The Second Claim

241

(3)

APPENDIX III: SAMPLE COVER LETTERS

244

(5)

For Sending an Article to Law Reviews

244

(1)

For Sending a Reprint to Potential Readers

245

(2)

For Sending a Reprint to Potential Readers on Whose Work You Substantially Rely

247

(2)

Endnotes

249

(8)

Index

257

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Academic Legal Writing

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials