Call for Proposals: LWI One-Day Workshops
The LWI One-Day Workshops Committee is now accepting proposals for presentations! We have 7 host sites this Spring—3 in-person (Akron, Notre Dame, and Mitchell Hamline) and 4 virtual (Suff olk, Stetson, Florida, and LWI’s Research & Scholarship Working Group). Please view the list of hosts with their accompanying themes below.
To apply, please complete the proposal SUBMISSION FORM by March 3, 2025.
Please see below for a list of the information requested in the form. You may submit more than one proposal, but if there aren’t enough spots for all speakers, applicants presenting on a single topic at a single location will be given priority at each location.
Notifications will be made the week of March 24. We will strive to notify presenters for in-person locations prior to that date to accommodate the need to make travel arrangements.
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LWI is committed to contributing to a legal writing discipline that is equitable and inclusive. LWI recognizes that increasing diversity brings added intellectual, scholarly, cultural, social, and economic benefi ts to the academic and lawyering communities. As a result, LWI especially encourages proposals from underrepresented groups and speakers who have not presented in the past, including practitioners.
Information Requested in the Form Email
- Name
- Place of employment
- Years of teaching or practice experience
- Name(s) of co-presenter(s), if any
- Title of your proposed presentation
- Desired length of presentation (25 or 50
- min)
- Brief description of your proposed
- presentation (under 100 words)
- First, second, and third choice of host school
- Are you willing to serve as a mentor?
- Would you like to be assigned a mentor?
- Additional comments for organizers
LWI One-Day Workshops Spring 2025
University of Akron School of Law
Friday, April 25, 2025 – in-person (Akron, OH–EDT)
Prioritizing Well-being and Self-care Among Students As Well As Ourselves.
- Starting as early as law school, attorneys have a history of ignoring self-care, resulting in burnout, exhaustion, and fatigue. The focus of this workshop will be to introduce and discuss methods to help prevent this, including ways to prioritize mental, emotional, and physical health. What are proven and/or successful methods for sustaining happiness, energy, and enthusiasm throughout periods of hardship? How can we express the importance of this to our students and how can we act as examples by taking our own suggestions and advice?
Suffolk University Law School & LWI Global Lawyering Committee
Friday, April 25, 2025 – virtual (Boston, MA–EDT)
Strategies for Implementing the ABA Standard Regarding Cross-cultural Competencies
- In an increasingly diverse and polarized world, the ability to engage in respectful dialogue across cultural and ideological differences has become an essential skill for legal professionals and educators. Indeed, law schools are mandated to teach cross-cultural competency under ABA Standard 303(c). Yet this skill can be difficult to teach and practice without taking a thoughtful, informed approach. This one-day virtual workshop will off er an innovative program that provides simple yet effective strategies to develop this skill.
- We invite proposals that offer ideas about promoting respectful dialogue to enhance cross-cultural competency. Attendees will also engage in an interactive workshop led by a Dialogue Fellow, who will share valuable knowledge and practical tools to facilitate constructive conversations on challenging topics in both classroom and professional settings. Join us for this transformative session!
Notre Dame Law School
Saturday, April 26, 2025 – in-person (South Bend, IN–EDT)
The Changing Needs of Our Ever-changing World
- Our teaching and scholarship must evolve to meet the changing needs of our ever-changing world. We must adapt our instruction, assignments, assessments, and outcomes to the era of generative artificial intelligence, and we must develop and adopt curricular reforms to prepare our students for the NextGen Bar. We welcome presentations related to this theme, including but not limited to, the following topics: Using AI in the classroom to make our students more effective lawyers; Teaching for the NextGen Bar exam; Teaching client interviewing and counseling; Ensuring practice-ready students; AI in the legal practice; Using AI in scholarship; Measuring student outcomes in the age of AI; and How will AI change law schools and the law school curriculum?
Stetson University College of Law
Saturday, April 26, 2025 – virtual (Gulfport, FL–EDT)
Building the Contours of the Discipline
- During such an exciting time in the development of legal writing as an academic discipline, it is important to promote the exciting work scholars in our fi eld are producing. This workshop will focus on boosting our academic discipline through legal writing scholarship. We welcome presentations on scholarship, including presentations on research methodology, writing and editing, and organizing research and drafts. We also seek proposals to present recent legal writing scholarship through works-in-progress or recently completed articles.
University of Florida Levin College of Law
Friday, May 2, 2025 – virtual (Gainesville, FL–EDT)
Process-Oriented Teaching
- Teaching process over product was all the rage in the aughts. Twenty years later, we believe we ought to use process-oriented methods to tackle the great teaching challenges of our time. Do you scaffold assignments? Use collaborative projects early in the term? Emphasize the development of professional judgment in your course progression? This one-day workshop will explore how process-oriented teaching benefits students and how it may just be the answer to solving some of our current Legal Writing challenges: integrating AI to ensure practice readiness, preparing our students for NextGen Bar success, and meeting the complex learning needs of Gen-Z students. We are looking for fresh perspectives as well as experienced voices. Share your ideas—be part of the process!
Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Friday, May 2, 2025 – in person (St. Paul, MN–CDT)
Building the Discipline of Legal Writing
- This One-Day Workshop focuses on how we can continue to build the discipline of legal writing, produce impactful research, and promote greater scholarly engagement. Presentations may include how to develop a scholarly agenda and teaching philosophy and workshops for those who are working on scholarship. More specifi cally, potential presentations could address the processes for forming a scholarly identity, maintaining a scholarly identity, and nurturing a later-in-career scholarly identity. Another possible topic is manageable tips for scholarly engagement besides relegating it to the summer break. These are just ideas, and we are open to many others.
Research & Scholarship Working Group
Friday, May 2, 2025 – virtual EDT
Conducting Empirical Research to Advance the Discipline of Legal Writing.
- This workshop seeks to promote the discipline of legal writing through impactful research and scholarly engagement. We seek proposals on topics such as: Empirical Research 101 - what is it, qualitative v quantitative, why is it important in legal writing scholarship, types of legal writing topics that lend themselves to empirical exploration, etc.; Empirical Research 102 - Reading and Assessing Empirical Legal Research - tools to critically engage and evaluate empirical scholarship; Thinking through the design of an empirical research project; how to conduct qualitative empirical legal research; how to conduct quantitative empirical legal research; Do's and Don’ts of designing survey questions; Sharing your empirical research experience; the role of AI in empirical research; Using Empirical Legal Research to Develop a Research Agenda - data sets to identify unanswered/unexplored questions and issues; Resources for Empirical Legal Research - internal and external, technology, personnel, tapping into the expertise of law librarians, etc.; and The Institutional Review Board (IRB) Process - what is an IRB, when do you need approval, steps for getting that approval.
2024-25 One-Day Workshop Committee
- Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff (Co-Chair), Vermont Law & Graduate School
- Suzanna Geiser (Co-Chair), Campbell University
- Norman A. Wiggins, School of Law
- Tracy Norton, Louisiana State University Paul M. Herbert Law Center
- Marie Callaway Kellner, University of Idaho College of Law
- Carem Corvaia, St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law
- Ericka Curran, University of Dayton School of Law
- Jim Dimitri, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
- Chelsea Harris, Emory University School of Law
- Joy Herr-Cardillo, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law
- Dawn Young, Loyola University Chicago School of Law
- Samantha Moppett, Suffolk University Law School
- Em Wright Stetson, University College of Law