Marquette Grad and Lawyers Honored for Service

As noted at the 2012 hooding ceremony this past Saturday, May 19, 2012, our recent graduates join a long line of Marquette lawyers in their dedication to excellence, faith, leadership, and service. This dedication to the university’s guiding values will be the measure of their contributions as lawyers. Perhaps former Dean Howard D. Eisenberg, whose legacy both Dean Kearney and speaker Judge Diane Sykes drew upon during the ceremony, expressed it best: “For those who seek an opportunity to do well, I hope you succeed, but neither your success nor your happiness can be measured unless you also do good.”

Exemplifying these values is our recent graduate Melissa Longamore (’12) (pictured), a recipient of this year’s Outstanding Public Service Law Student Award from the Wisconsin State Bar. As a law student, after establishing the Marquette Immigration Law Association, Melissa sought out new opportunities for herself and other interested Marquette law students to serve local immigrants with unmet legal needs. Among the new initiatives she helped bring about is the volunteer clinic at Voces de la Frontera, where she and other students, under the supervision of immigration attorneys, provide information and referrals to local immigrant clients. It has been gratifying to see the outpouring of enthusiasm among the student body for these efforts to serve the local immigrant community. It is also gratifying to Melissa’s excellence recognized by the bar.

Similar kudos are due to this month’s blogger, Quarles & Brady lawyer, Michael Gonring (’82), recognized for a lifetime of service, with the bar’s Pro Bono Award for Lifetime Achievement; as well as to alumna (and retired Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge) Hon. Barbara A. Kluka (’78), who is the deserved recipient of this year’s Lifetime Jurist Achievement Award.

 

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Typography for Lawyers

“The four most important typographic choices you make in any document are point size, line spacing, line length, and font, because those choices determine how the body text looks.” Matthew Butterick, Typography for Lawyers: Essential Tools for Polished and Persuasive Documents, “Summary of Key Rules” (2010).

Does that sentence make any sense to you? If so, find Butterick’s book: you will love it.

If not, run out and get Butterick’s book: you need it.

After running a website on typography for lawyers, www.typographyforlawyers.com, Matthew Butterick last year published a book on the subject. The book seems designed to do for typography what Bryan Garner’s work has done on matters of style and usage—to convince more lawyers that this “small stuff” matters in their writing, in their approach to the practice.

Indeed, Butterick’s belief that “typography” should become part of the vocabulary and professional awareness of lawyers forms the “core principles” of his book:

  1. Good typography is part of good lawyering.
  2. Typography in legal documents should be held to the same standards as any professionally published material. Why? Because legal documents are professionally published material. (Corollary: much of what lawyers consider “proper” legal typography is an accumulation of bad habits and urban legends. These myths will be set aside in favor of professional typographic habits.)
  3. Any lawyer can master the essentials of good typography.
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Lawyers: Play Nice

As you may have already seen, the blawgs have been discussing this recent order by United States District Court Judge Eric Melgren. Judge Melgren issued the order granting a motion for a continuance of a trial scheduled for June 14, 2011, in Kansas, after the defendant, a Dallas attorney,  sought the continuance on the grounds that his first-born son was due to be born on July 3, 2011. The judge expresses his dismay at the plaintiff’s attorneys’ decision to oppose the motion:

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