Writing Competitions for Law Students: Writing Resources

BLS Library pre-ordered 2 print copies for Reserve. BLS faculty can view a digital copy of this book by creating a West Academic account at https://faculty.westacademic.com
Excerpt from publisher's book description: "A standard-setter in American legal education, Writing and Analysis in the Law provides a guide to legal writing, focusing on the importance of thoughtful, thorough analysis and clear organization in written communications. Developed as a textbook for a first-year law school course and successful in courses for foreign LLM students, the book introduces law students to analyzing and writing about legal authority in cases and statutes. It discusses the structure and persuasive techniques of effective argumentation. The book makes effective use of high-quality and illustrative examples and writing exercises....The 8th edition responds to legal education’s increased attention to professional identity and cultural competence, focusing on interpersonal skills that are as important as a lawyer’s research and analytic skills (the latter required by ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.1). Alongside the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, this edition introduces first-year students to the American Bar Association’s two new standards to build law students’ professional skills: Standard 303(b) on professional identity formation and Standard 303(c) on cross-cultural competence....Along these lines, there is also an expanded section on inclusive language....One addition to the writing process chapter is a discussion of generative artificial intelligence and its advantages and pitfalls....Finally, upon the recommendation of our research and teaching assistants, the 8th edition reintroduces updated appendices on citation in both Bluebook and ALWD and provides a citation exercise."

The authors of this guide are former BLS faculty. There are three copies in the Reserve collection & one circulating copy in the Main collection.
Includes these chapters: The writing process: getting it down on paper -- The writing process: revising and polishing -- Footnotes and the ethical use of borrowed materials -- Writing with care -- Writing with style --Getting mileage: winning awards, publishing your work, and joining the conversation.

Includes these chapters: Entering writing competitions -- Academic ethics.

Many law student writing competitions state that citations in submissions should conform to the current edition of The Bluebook.

Contents: Part 1. Mechanics -- Part 2. Grammar, usage, and editing -- Part 3. Specific documents -- Part 4. Scholarly writing.
The description of this legal style manual at Amazon states that this new edition includes "updates relating to pronoun use (especially they) and questions of unconscious bias."

Contents: Style as choice -- Understanding style -- Correctness -- Clarity -- Actions -- Characters -- Cohesion and coherence -- Emphasis -- Clarity of form -- Motivation -- Global coherence -- Grace -- Concision -- Shape -- Elegance -- Ethics -- The ethics of style.

This is an updated edition of a well-known guide to clear legal writing. It includes many sample legal documents and exercises.