Resources for Legal Writing Scholars

The Legal Writing Institute:
www.lwionline.org/


The Association of Legal Writing Directors:
www.alwd.org

Scribes:
www.scribes.org

The American Association of Law Libraries:
www.aallnet.org

The Legal Writing Institute sponsors a closed listserv for professional teachers of legal writing:
LRWPROF-L.

Many of the resources we describe here are announced through the listserv. The first step in joining the listserv is to join the Legal Writing Institute. Here is a link to the
Legal Writing Institute’s home page.

LWI membership information is
available here.

LWI and ALWD Scholarship Grants

The Legal Writing Institute, the Association of Legal Writing Directors and LexisNexis together offer grants to support legal writing scholars.   Calls for applications are posted on the listserv.

You can get more information at these links:
LWI:   https://lwionline.org/legal_writing_scholarships.html

ALWD: https://www.alwd.org/grants/

LWI Writer’s Workshop and Retreat:
Each year the Legal Writing Institute sponsors a writer’s workshop that offers the opportunity to further develop your work. The workshop accepts applications from both novice and experienced scholars. Facilitators are available to workshop drafts, but writers may also use the uninterrupted time to start or continue a project in a lovely setting. Contact the LWI Writers’ Workshop Governing Board for more information. Watch the Legal Writing Listserv (LRWPROF-L) for annual announcements.

ALWD Scholarship Forums and Workshops:
ALWD sponsors several scholarship forums or workshops each year. Most often the workshops coincide with regional conferences, giving participants a chance to workshop a paper with other legal writing professionals, shortly before or after attending a conference. Contact the ALWD Scholarship Workshop Committee for more information. Watch the Legal Writing Listserv (LRWPROF-L) for periodic announcements of these workshops. Visit website

JALWD Visiting Scholars Grants.
Each year ALWD awards grants that help law schools defray the costs of bringing in top Legal Writing Scholars to present scholarship to the school with intended audiences of faculty, students and practitioners. Contact the ALWD Visiting Scholar Grant Committee for more information. Watch the Legal Writing Listserv (LRWPROF-L) for invitations to apply for a Visiting Scholar Grant. Visit website

Mentors are available through several sources. LWI’s Scholarship Development and Outreach Committee has a program to provide scholarship mentors. You can find more about the committee here:
https://wiki.lwionline.org/index.php/
Scholarshipoutreachanddevelopment

Or you may contact us at the Journal with your request, and we will help you find a mentor.

The Monograph Series on the website of the Legal Writing Institute is a series of electronic volumes that gathers “substantial, well-developed pieces of scholarship in the form of law review articles or book chapters that have been previously published elsewhere.  Each volume focuses on a specific topic.   For example, the first volume addresses “The Art of Critiquing Written Work” and the third volume focuses on “Teaching Legal Writing:  Theory.”   You can find the Monograph Series here: https://www.lwionline.org/monograph.html.

Law, Communication and Rhetoric:  JALWD  is the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors.
https://www.alwd.org/lcr/

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process is edited by faculty members of the UALR William H. Bowen School of Law.
https://ualr.edu/law/publications/the-journal-of-appellate-practice-and-process/

The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing is the journal of The  American Society of Legal Writers.
https://www.scribes.org/scribes-journal-legal-writing

SSRN JOURNALS
Several electronic services on the Social Science Research Network are on topics of interest to legal writing professionals.  To subscribe, go to SSRN.com. Here is a partial list of eJournals with topics that are similar to those we publish.

Legal Writing eJournal is hosted by LWI
https://www.ssrn.com/link/Legal-Writing.html

Law, Cognition & Decisionmaking eJournal
is sponsored by UCLA School of Law and Indiana University Maurer School of Law.

Law & Literature eJournal
distributes working and accepted papers on Interdisciplinary topics or using interdisciplinary methods.

Law & Rhetoric eJournal
is sponsored by the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University and the William S. Boyd School of Law.

Legal Education eJournal
is edited by Hannah R. Arterian, Syracuse University and Jeremy R. Paul, Northeastern University.

The Second Draft is the newsletter of the Legal Writing Institute and contains lively short articles and essays on teaching.  It is published twice a year.
https://www.lwionline.org/the_second_draft.html

LWI Lives reports on members of the Legal Writing Institute, describing their distinctive talents, gifts, interests and interactions with their communities.
https://www.lwionline.org/lwi_lives.html

The American Association of Law Schools publishes  a newsletter for the Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research.  Visiting this website will give you the names of those who can help you gain access to the site: Click here

Perspectives: 
Teaching Legal Research and Writing is an electronic journal published by Thomson Reuters twice a year.  Click here

The award winning Legal Writing ProfBlog, a member of the Law Professor Blogs Network, is reliably updated with news of interest to legal writing scholars.
You will find it here

The New Legal Writer:
https://raymondpward.typepad.com/newlegalwriter/

Legible:
https://sites.utexas.edu/legalwriting/

The Persuasive Litigator:
https://www.persuasivelitigator.com

Adams on Contract Drafting:
https://www.adamsdrafting.com/blog/

Law Prose:
https://www.lawprose.org/blog/