Seminar Guide - Law and Literature

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. It helps novices and even more experienced scholars to write papers with a minimum of anxiety. Employing a process theory of writing, the text first describes the enterprise of scholarly writing, and then discusses techniques for brainstorming, researching, drafting, and revising for substance and style. There are also chapters on footnote practice, plagiarism, law review editing, and publication. Appendices provide a sample law-review competition paper, answers to in-text exercises, and sample syllabi for scholarly writing courses.

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.

Most law schools require upper-level students to write a sophisticated legal research paper on a topic of their choice. Scholarly Writing guides students through a five-step process of constructing their legal research papers, from topic selection to finishing the final product. Maintaining its example-based approach, the new edition includes additional sample excerpts to illustrate concepts throughout the text, and there is a second annotated full-length paper. Up-to-date information about legal research and organizational tools is included as are bright ideas for student writers, and even more cross-referencing. The text may be used as either a required text for a course in Scholarly Legal Writing or a companion guide for students working on legal writing projects independently.