Tag Archives: SSRN

The Basics of Legal Writing for Legal Professionals.

04 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by in Editing, Grammar, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, Plain Language, Readability

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The Writing Process for New Lawyers: Getting it Written and Right, by Gerald Lebovits, The Legal Writer, 89 N.Y. St. B.J. 80 (May 2017) (with hat tip to William P. Statsky)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2967050

Although this article is about the basics of legal writing, even seasoned legal writers will find it useful and instructive. Regardless of how well we think we write, we can always improve.

This article puts an emphasis on focusing on the purpose of your document, organizing your thoughts, considering your reader, researching, and editing. In short, all the basics you need to write well. -CCE

“How To” On Drafting Dispute Resolution Agreements.

25 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in Contract Law, Dispute Resolution, Legal Writing, Settlement

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Drafting for Dispute Resolution, by John M. Newman, SSRN (with hat tip to Louis J. Sirico, Jr., Director of Legal Writing, Villanova Univ. School of Law, Legal Skills Prof Blog)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2867692

Not all cases end in litigation and go to trial. At times, the best service counsel can give to clients is an out-of-court resolution. Careful drafting of an agreement between the parties includes numerous considerations to protect your client and to assure acceptance by everyone involved. Definitely worth a bookmark. -CCE

This is a brief guide to drafting for dispute resolution. Topics covered include mandatory-arbitration provisions, class waivers, choice of law, choice of venue, exculpatory and liquidated-damages clauses, fee and cost allocations, and more. . . .

This guide seeks to concisely identify and explore, from a transactional perspective, the relevant questions, considerations, and law relating to these powerful tools. It also provides illustrative examples of well-drafted provisions, often drawn from real-world legal instruments. . . .

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Bad Brief!

28 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Bad Legal Writing, Brief Writing, Judges, Legal Analysis, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, Persuasive Writing, Readability

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Effective Brief Writing Despite High Volume Practice: Ten Misconceptions that Result in Bad Briefs, by Sarah E. Ricks, Rutgers School of Law – Camden, and Jane L. Istvan, City of Philadelphia Law Department, 38 U. Tol. L. Rev. 1113, SSRN

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=996907

Excellent paper on the repeated mistakes judges and their staff see in briefs.

In a busy law practice, we may not always have the luxury of researching and editing as thoroughly as we may like when writing a brief. We are so familiar with our case that we often forget the perspective of our reader. Imagine sitting all day in trial immersed in one area of law, and then switching gears afterwards to read and absorb a brief in a completely different type of law.

This paper reminds us how to write persuasively for the court, even when under pressure to meet deadlines. -CCE

A Way To Find Free Research Sources On The Internet.

19 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by in Internet, Research, SSRN

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How to Conduct Legal Academic Research When Relying on Internet Sources? By Gijs Van Dijck, Tilburg University – Faculty of Law, Social Science Research Network (SSRN)(with hat tip to William P. Statsky!)

If you do any kind of research, legal or otherwise, you must read this paper. I admit that I am cheap – I do not like to pay for legal research resources. Although there are many really good legal research sources that are fee-based, there is a wealth of information out there – and it’s all free. -CCE

perma.cc/YBK7-DMHY

Abstract:  Many legal researchers in this world lack access to books and to subscription-based journals. With more and more information disclosed online and with open-access policies becoming increasingly popular and more common, information is becoming more accessible. The potential impact of this development is enormous in areas or jurisdictions where offline information is scarce and where access to subscription-based journals or books is limited or non-existing. This paper discusses how to identify and select relevant publications when relying on Internet sources. The strategies, databases, and selection tools reported in this paper help researchers, particularly novices, who rely on the Internet to find relevant sources in an effective way when producing legal academic information.

The Origin of the Bluebook – Let’s Get The Record Straight.

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Citations, Legal Writing, The Bluebook

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Where Did The Bluebook Originate?, by Joe Hodnicki, Law Librarians Blog

http://llb2.com/2015/12/11/where-did-the-bluebook-originate/

Ask most legal professionals where the Bluebook originated and they will likely say ‘Harvard Law School.’ In The Secret History of the Bluebook (Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 100, No. 4, 2016 Forthcoming) [SSRN], Fred R. Shapiro (Yale) and Julie Graves Krishnaswami (Yale) beg to differ. . . .

Following Yale’s lead in what we would call today, the uniform citation movement, Harvard Law School produced its own guide for the Harvard Law Review editorial staff in 1922, ‘Instructions for Editorial Work.’ Many have pointed to the Harvard document as being the precursor to the first edition of the Bluebook which was published in 1926.

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This time around, Shapiro and Krishnaswami set the record straight about where and how this work began. Highly recommended for Bluebookologists and anyone else interested in the adoption and use of standardized citation practices and advances in legal bibliography.

New And Easy-To-Use Search Tools for SSRN.

04 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in References, Research, SSRN

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Did You Know? Searching SSRN Just Got Easier, by Gregory Gordon, President and CEO of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) (with hat tip to Sabrina I. Pacifici, BeSpacific Blog)

http://ssrnblog.com/2015/10/02/did-you-know-searching-ssrn-just-got-easier/

Scholars of all types share their research here. You will often see it at SSRN before you see it in books and other publications. If you have not taken the time to truly investigate what you can find here, please give yourself a treat. -CCE

In What We Don’t Know We Don’t Know, I wrote about the overwhelming amount of data that is available today.  This is especially true of the SSRN eLibrary. With over 600,000 papers, finding the right research may seem daunting. So, we significantly improved our search functionality.

SSRN’s new page centralizes all the tools you need to find stuff in the eLibrary. We combined Quick Search and Advanced Search onto one tab, and made it simple to switch to Browse SSRN Networks or Browse JEL Codes. Did you even know all of those functions existed? . . . .

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Legal Writing Papers at SSRN.

03 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in Legal Writing

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 Legal Writing E-Journal, Social Science Research Notebook

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/JELJOUR_Results.cfm?form_name=journalbrowse&journal_id=902240

If I am reading this correctly, there are over 1,000 legal writing articles compiled by SSRN. You may find some of these articles to be a bit esoteric and academic. Nevertheless, it is definitely worth investigating. Please add this to your legal writing library bookmarks. -CCE

A Special Treat For Civil Procedure Geeks.

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Civil Procedure, Federal Civil Procedure

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A Reader’s Guide to Pre-Modern Procedure, by Louis J. Sirico, Jr., Legal Skills Prof Blog

http://tinyurl.com/lqodu5n

In this short article, David Noll explains procedural terms with which students often are unfamiliar. These terms predate the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which most Civil Procedure classes seem to pass over.

These terms, like ‘demurrer’ and ‘nonsuit,’ may pop up not only in old court cases that students may study, but also in state court procedural rules. . . .

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This Is THE Right Way To Cite to Legal Authorities.

13 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by in Citations, Legal Writing, Parentheticals, Readability, String Citations

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Four Tips on Citing Authority, by Professor Eric Voigt, R+W Legal Consultants

http://rwlegalconsultants.com/four-tips-on-citing-authority/

Although Professor Hazelwood of the University of Kentucky does not resolve the continuing debate between citations in the text or in footnotes, she has drafted a practical article on citing authority. Professor Hazelwood discusses four ways to unclutter your legal writing: (1) don’t string cite numerous cases for the same point; (2) place citations at the end of sentences; (3) include explanatory parentheticals with citations to further explain the relevance of the citations; and (4) avoid unnecessary repetition.

Her article was published by the Kentucky Bar Association in its monthly journal, Bench & Bar. You can read the full article on her SSRN page.

Student Guide to Footnotes and Citations in Scholarly Writing.

22 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Citations, Footnotes, Legal Writing, Research, The Bluebook

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When a Rose Isn’t ‘Arose’ Isn’t Arroz: A Student Guide to Footnoting for Informational Clarity and Scholarly Discourse, by Mark E. Wojcik, Legal Writing Prof Blog

http://tinyurl.com/nm4p2x6

Professor William Mock has authored an article meant to help students cite more sensibly. The article begins with welcome advice: ‘Not every proposition in a law review articles requires citation, nor does every footnote require cited authority.’ (And in case you’re worried already, that sentence has two footnotes in the orginal!).

It is the kind of article that should be given to incoming law journal editorial boards to help student editors (and research assistants) understand the distinctions among different types of footnotes.

You can share this link for students to download a copy of the paper from SSRN.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1019891

(With students, we recommend giving the link rather than the document itself so that students will also learn how to do research on SSRN–a source that gives them information not found on Westlaw or Lexis or Bloomberg).

If law journals adopt more sensible rules for citations rather than strict mathematical formulas (such as 1.8 pages of footnotes for each page of text), law reviews have a chance to increase their readability and usefulness to readers.

Two 2014 Pivotal Supreme Court Cases on Personal Jurisdiction And Their Lasting Impact on Civil Litigation.

08 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Civil Procedure, Class Actions, Federal Civil Procedure, Jurisdiction, Litigation

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Rhodes and Robertson on the New PJ Decisions, by Robin Effron, Civil Procedure & Federal Courts Blog

http://tinyurl.com/kbepuyd

Interesting implications for both state and federal civil litigation. This article deserves thoughtful study. -CCE

Charles “Rocky” Rhodes (South Texas College of Law) and Cassandra Burke Robertson (Case Western) have posted Toward a New Equilibrium in Personal Jurisdiction to SSRN.

In early 2014, the Supreme Court decided two new personal jurisdiction cases that will have a deep and wide-ranging impact on civil litigation in the coming decades: Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746 (2014), and Walden v. Fiore, 134 S. Ct. 1115 (2014). Bauman eliminates the traditional “continuous and systematic” contacts test for general jurisdiction, and Walden significantly retracts the ability of courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over out-of-state defendants whose actions have in-state effects. Taken together, both cases will make it significantly more difficult for plaintiffs to exercise control over where lawsuits are filed. In some cases — such as large-scale class actions — the new decisions may make it impossible to identify a single forum where multiple defendants can be sued together, and will therefore shift the balance of litigation power from plaintiffs to defendants.

This Article examines the effect that these decisions will have on future litigation and suggests solutions to the problems that will arise in the wake of these decisions. It analyzes how the Court’s new jurisprudence has shifted the balance of power in the jurisdictional framework, and it explores areas of future litigation. . . .