Selected guides to legal publishing Read More ...

San Jose Mercury News article refers to SCU Law paper on the topic Read More ...

Good writing is often colorful, vivid writing. But it's possible to be too colorful. Kevin Underhill of the blog Lowering the Bar reports on a pro se appellant's recent petition to the Ninth Circuit for an en banc rehearing. Go here for a description of the petition and to find a link to a pdf copy of the petition. (As a word of warning, "ass clowns" is probably the most polite way the appellant refers to the court.) Read More ...

A recent article on SSRN (the Social Science Research Network) explains how students might go about publishing an outstanding seminar paper in an academic law journal. After an introduction, which briefly discusses publishing in bar journals, writing competitions, and journals which specialize in particular subject areas, the article provides a chart listing the publication policies of 194 law reviews regarding submissions from students from other law schools and from students at the journal's own law school who are not law review members. Thanks to Joe Hodnicki and the Law Librarian blog for the link. Read More ...

The 19th edition of the Bluebook was released this year. The law library has several copies on reserve. If you want to know how this edition has changed from the previous one, there is a chart describing these changes. Read More ...

Gerald Uelmen, professor at Santa Clara Law, has written an article for California Lawyer on the declining value of law review articles in the judiciary. Although this trend has been written on frequently over the last 20 years, Uelmen's article presents a scathing critique of the current focus on law review journals and how they are addressed to a largely academic audience. Read More ...

If your brief or pleading or memorandum is unpleasant to read, the quality of your reasoning and arguments can be muted. Matthew Butterick, formerly a typeface designer and now a litigation attorney in Los Angeles, has created Typography for Lawyers to give lawyers and law students an introduction to the principles of typography. Read More ...

"Introduction to the California Style Manual" Read More ...

Here is a list of the most downloaded articles from SCU-affiliated scholars on the SSRN Network for the past 12 months. Read More ...

The New York Times has an interesting article about the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and its increasing influence on academic legal publishing. A new feature on the SSRN which tallies downloads of each article is being used by professors to gauge the impact of their articles before actual publication. The article also comments how the increased accessibility of legal publishing, through technologies such as the SSRN, is expanding the audience and impact of these materials. Read More ...

A new article entitled, "Training Independent Learners: Student Self-Editing Checklist for Law School Papers, Notes and Comments" is now available on SSRN. Written by faculty at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, the articles lists many of the most basic principles of good, clear writing and many of the most common flaws in students' papers. It requires the student to certify, by signing and noting the date and time, that the student has checked the paper for each of the points listed. Read More ...

There has been a considerable amount of controversy created by a recent Harvard Law Review note entitled, "Never Again Should A People Starve in a World of Plenty". The article heavily criticizes the pursuit of "big-firm" employment over public interest and social justice law. It has been critiqued by a number of notable conservatives and libertarians among legal blogs. Read More ...

A new peer-reviewed open access journal is available from Harvard University's School of Law. The journal is scheduled to begin publication in Fall 2008. If you are interested in submitting to this journal follow the instructions from their website. Read More ...

From Suffolk University Law School Legal Practice Skills Program Read More ...

Interviews with U.S. Supreme Court justices on legal writing and advocacy Read More ...

A million-dollar contract dispute turns on the placement of a comma. Read More ...

An article in the September 8th Chronicle of Higher Education lists the "Seven Deadly Sins of Student Writers." It is written by Ben Yagoda, Professor of English at the University of Delaware and the author of a forthcoming book entitled When you catch an adjective, kill it. Law students might also be interested in what he has to say about dangling modifiers, punctuation, spell-check errors, etc. Read More ...

3L Epiphany continues to explore the impact of blogging on legal scholarship with this post, which lists law review articles that cite to blogs as well as the blogs cited most frequently by law review articles. 

Professor Eugene Volokh has posted several valuable tips on the Volokh Conspiracy about how to succeed during the law-review write-on process.  If you haven’t read some of his longer works on academic legal writing, I highly recommend the following:

• Eugene Volokh, Writing a Student Article, 48 J. Legal Educ. 247 (1998) (available on HeinOnline to SCU students and faculty).
• Eugene Volokh, Test Suites: A Tool for Improving Student Articles, 52 J. Legal Educ. 440 (2002).
• EUGENE VOLOKH, ACADEMIC LEGAL WRITING: LAW REVIEW ARTICLES, STUDENT NOTES, SEMINAR PAPERS, AND GETTING ON LAW REVIEW (2005) (available at Heafey).