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Legal Writing Institute - Activities

Golden Pen Award - Purpose of the Award

The Institute has created an Outreach Committee to raise the Institute’s profile and to improve the quality of legal writing throughout the legal profession. As part of that effort, the Committee has created a Golden Pen Award to recognize persons who have significantly advanced the cause of better legal writing.

The 2008 Award Ceremony

On Thursday, January 3, 2008, two awards will be conferred at the AALS Annual Meeting in New York at a very special event sponsored by the LWI and ALWD.

(1) The Golden Pen Award will be presented to Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; and

(2) The Thomas F. Blackwell Memorial Award will be presented to Diana V. Pratt, Director of Legal Writing at Wayne State University Law School from 1981 until 2007.

The 2008 Award Ceremony event will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, Empire Ballroom East, 2nd Floor, 811 7th Avenue at 53rd Street with a reception following.

Please make every effort to help us celebrate the outstanding achievements and contributions Judge Aldisert and Professor Pratt have made to the field of legal writing.

Procedures for the Award

Possible Recipients: Anyone who has made an extraordinary contribution to the cause of better legal writing. The contribution may take any form, such as promoting the use of clear language in public documents, outstanding scholarship or journalism about legal writing, exceptional writing in law practice, improving the quality of legal-writing instruction, or advocating for better writing within the legal community. Normally, the award will be given to someone who is not an active member of the Legal Writing Institute, but an active member may be considered in exceptional circumstances.
Timing of the Award: Ideally, once a year at the annual meeting of the AALS. Alternatively, at the Institute’s summer conference or at any other place that the Board of Directors approves.
Number of Persons Who Could Receive the Award Each Year: No strict limits. For instance, several persons might be responsible for a specific project. As a rule, though, we would probably not recognize more than two persons or projects a year.
Procedure for Identifying and Choosing Recipients: Any member of the Institute may nominate someone. The Outreach Committee will call for nominations through The Second Draft and by electronic means. The committee will send a nomination or nominations to the Board of Directors before July 1 of each year. The committee will try to operate by consensus, but a majority vote is enough to approve a nomination. If multiple nominations are approved for a given year, the committee will recommend them in order of preference. The Board may reject all nominees.