Monday, June 23, 2014

Painting with Print

On the homepage for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals under Guides is a link to an interesting article published in the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors: "Painting with print: Incorporation concepts of typographic and layout design into the text of legal writing documents."

You might think that nice typography and design are just the icing on the cake - the cake being the substance and organization of your legal writing - but author and professor Ruth Anne Robbins suggests that "[m]aking a textual document visually effective means making the document as readable as possible. The more readable the document, the more likely the reader will remember the content."

The Seventh Circuit appears to agree on the importance of typography in legal writing; in addition to Professor Robbins' article, the court offers a link to its own "Requirements and Suggestions for Typography in Briefs and Other Papers."

http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/rules/painting_with_print.pdf

http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/Rules/type.pdf

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Global Legal Skills Conference 2014

Mark Wojcik and crew did it again!

The Global Legal Skills Conference, which took place 21-24 May in Verona, Italy, was truly wonderful. The wide array of speakers and participants, along with generous sponsors and hard-working staff, made this one of the most well-organized, interesting, and enriching conferences I've ever attended.

A sampling of the panel presentation topics include the following:

  • Institutionalizing Practical Lawyering Skills in a Continuing Legal Education Program
  • Creating a Cohesive Curriculum for Graduate Students
  • Comparative Legislation, Statutory Drafting, and Statutory Interpretation
  • Needs of Legal English Users in Italy
  • International Legal Frameworks to Prevent Financial Abuse of Elders
  • Teaching Students to Produce Scholarship
  • Cool and Useful Foreign Law Legal Research Tools
  • “Interference” and the Legal Writing Needs of International Lawyers
  • Get Your Students Talking: Emphasizing Speaking Skills in LWR Courses for Foreign Lawyers
  • Demystifying the American Law School Classroom for International LL.M. Students: Oral Reporting on Legal Research
  • The Proposed EU-US Free Trade Agreement (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership): Its Impact on U.S. and European Law and How it Will Affect the Teaching of International Law

Additional GLS 2014 information here: http://glsc.jmls.edu/2014/

Next year's GLS Conference takes place in Chicago, and I highly recommend attending. These conferences just keep getting better and better!

The GLS Conference facebook page will post up-to-date information as it becomes available: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Legal-Skills-Conference/116241592994