Mastering the Art of Legal Writing

childsWednesday night I went to see the movie Julie & Julia, which is about a writer, Julie, who blogs about working her way through chef Julia Child’s famed cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in one year.  I loved everything about the movie, and as such, I’m starting off this blog post with a discussion of the movie.  (This post was actually originally entitled “Best Brief Awards.”) 

One of my favorite scenes was when Julie pulled her first roasted whole chicken out of the oven.  I roasted my first whole chicken this summer.  Like Julie, who felt like a “lobster killer” when she boiled three live lobsters for Lobster Thermidor, I must admit that I felt a bit like an executioner when I ordered my organic hand-fed chicken through our CSA, Backyard Bounty.  Guiltily, I asked Farmer Laura how she knows which chickens are ready for slaughter.  She said she knows it’s time when the chickens start to bite her.  (I guess the lesson there is “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”)  At home with my chicken, I tried to do the chicken justice by dressing it with olive oil and sprigs of thyme and rosemary from our garden.  I felt Julie’s same sense of pride and excitement when I opened the oven door and a perfect golden-brown roast chicken appeared from the oven.

Watching the movie reminded me of how students develop in their legal writing classes. 

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Legal Writing Monograph Series

13156535v1_240x240_Front_Color-BlackLast year, the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) Board of Directors created a Monograph series.  The Monograph’s first electronic volume is now available on the LWI website.  The focus of this first volume is “The Art of Critiquing Written Work.”  Our own Professor Alison Julien worked on this project.  Professor Jane Kent Gionfriddo stated in a post to the LWI listserv that the volumes “will focus on a specific topic relevant to teaching, curriculum, scholarship or status of Legal Writing professionals and will include substantial, well-developed pieces of scholarship in the form of law review articles or book chapters that have been previously published elsewhere.”

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Storytelling in Appellate Brief Writing

2566241384_4264b1f0f3At the end of July, both Professor Michael Smith and I attended the Applied Legal Storytelling Conference at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.  The conference was entitled “Chapter 2:  Once Upon a Legal Story” and focused on storytelling in “ways that will directly and tangibly benefit law students (i.e. future lawyers) and legal practitioners (i.e. former law students).”  The presentations I attended addressed ways to use storytelling to create a stronger narrative theme in a case and how to handle the ethical issues in storytelling.

One of the most intriguing presentations was Professor Kenneth Chestek’s talk “Judging by the Numbers:  an Empirical Study of the Power of Story.”  Professor Chestek conducted a study where he wrote four fictional test briefs:  two that focused heavily on stating the law and applying it (the “pure logos” briefs), and two that focused on creating a narrative story into which the law was inserted and applied (the “story” briefs).  (He wrote a logos brief and a story brief for both the petitioner and respondent.)  Professor Chestek solicited appellate practitioners, appellate judges, appellate judicial law clerks, appellate court staff attorneys, and legal writing professors to read these briefs and rate their strength of persuasion.  The participants knew they were taking part in a study, but they did not know who was conducting the study or what the purpose of the study was.

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