Academic Legal Writing by
Designed to help law students write and publish articles, this text 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. The Fifth Edition, based on the author's experience teaching his newly designed Intensive Editing Workshop and First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, adds material on editing, rebutting counterarguments, writing strategy, identifying and using the key assets of the article, fighting "the curse of knowledge," and submitting articles to law reviews. It also adds extra examples of sound writing, as well as editing exercises.
Making Law Review by
Every year, law students participate in the "write-on competition" for a shot at membership on the law review. Too many, however, enter the competition unprepared. This book is designed to help readers become familiar with how the competition works, how to prepare for it, and how to write a winning submission paper. Author Wes Henricksen interviewed dozens of current and former law review members at many of the top law schools to learn their secrets to success in the write-on competition. This book synthesizes those students' experiences into a comprehensive body of valuable advice.
Scholarly Writing by
Introduction to scholarly writing -- Thinking: finding your topic and developing your thesis -- Preparing: developing horizontal and vertical knowledge -- Executing: writing the draft -- Refining: evaluating and revising your draft -- Refining: taking and incorporating feedback -- Finishing: polishing the final product -- Finishing: publishing your paper.
Scholarly Writing for Law Students by
This book fills an important niche in legal-writing literature by teaching law students how to write scholarly papers for seminars, law reviews, and law-review competitions and how to have their work recognized. It helps novices and more experienced scholars alike to write papers with a minimum of anxiety and a maximum of creativity. Employing a process theory of writing, the text first describes the enterprise of scholarly writing and then discusses techniques for brainstorming topics and theses, researching, drafting, and revising for substance and style. It covers both traditional doctrinal topics and newer areas like empirical studies. There are also chapters on footnotes, avoiding plagiarism, law review practice, and dissemination of student work through publication and submission to national writing competitions. Appendices provide a sample law-review competition paper, answers to in-text exercises, sample syllabi for scholarly writing courses, and a rubric for evaluating and editing scholarly papers and articles.
The following articles and books can provide you with more information on selecting a topic for your research paper:
Ruthann Robson, Law Students as Legal Scholars: An Essay/Review of Scholarly Writing for Law Students and Academic Legal Writing, 7 New York City L. Rev. 195 (2004).
Eugene Volokh, Writing a Student Article, 48 J. Legal Educ. 247 (1998).
For information on scholarly writing and the research process, please see our guides on: