Legal Writing Institute Awards

Teresa Godwin Phelps Award for Scholarship in Legal Communication

Recognizing Outstanding Scholarship in Legal Communication

The Teresa Godwin Phelps Award for Scholarship in Legal Communication highlights the Legal Writing Institute’s discipline-building priority. The award recognizes outstanding scholarship that strengthens the discipline of legal communication.

One or more awards may be given each year for scholarly articles or essays. When warranted, additional awards may be presented for outstanding books within the discipline.

Naming the award in honor of Teresa Godwin “Terry” Phelps recognizes her consistent support for and encouragement of others’ scholarly work and her own exemplary scholarship in narrative, international human rights, and legal rhetoric. Her foundational article, The New Legal Rhetoric, 40 Sw. L.J. 1089 (1986), introduced the essential idea that legal writing was itself a field worthy of serious scholarly study.

The Phelps Award honors and draws attention to individual works of outstanding scholarship specific to the legal writing discipline. The award is intended to establish aspirational standards for others writing in the field.

The Phelps Award was designed by LWI’s Discipline Building Working Group.

2026 Phelps Award Recipient

Danielle Tully

Brooklyn Law School

Recognized for

Beyond the Curve: Rethinking Norm-Referenced Grading in First-Year Legal Writing Courses

29 Legal Writing 1 (2025)

On behalf of the LWI Board and the Phelps Award Selection Committee, the Legal Writing Institute congratulates Professor Danielle Tully on receiving the 2026 Teresa Godwin Phelps Award for Scholarship in Legal Communication.

Eligibility and Selection Criteria

For purposes of the Phelps Award, discipline-building scholarship includes:

  • Scholarship addressing the theories, principles, practices, and conventions of legal communication.
  • Scholarship fostering the development of legal writing and research as an independent field of study.

Eligibility is defined by the content of the scholarship and its relationship to the discipline of legal communication—not by the author’s faculty status, level of experience, or area of teaching.

The sole criterion for the award is the quality of the individual work of scholarship.

Previous Award Recipients

LWI recognizes the following scholars and their outstanding contributions to the discipline of legal communication. Where available, select a recipient’s name to read the original award announcement.

2025

Carolyn Williams University of North Dakota School of Law 
Bracing for Impact: Revising Legal Writing Assessments Ahead of the Collision of Generative AI and the Next Gen Bar Exam, 28 Legal Writing 1 (2024). 

2024

Susan McMahon Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law 
What We Teach When We Teach Legal Analysis, published in the Minnesota Law Review. 

2022

Robert Anderson University of Denver Sturm College of Law Reclaiming the Singular They in Legal Writing. 

2021

Christine Venter Notre Dame Law School Dissenting from the Bench: The Rhetorical and Performative Oral Jurisprudence of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia . 

2020

Susan Chesler Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law 
Karen Sneddon Mercer University School of Law 
Recognized for From Clause A to Clause Z: Narrative Transportation and the Transactional Reader . 

2019

Helena Whalen-Bridge National University of Singapore Faculty of Law Negative Narrative: Reconsidering Client Portrayals. 

2018

Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb Mercer University Walter F. George School of Law The Rhetoric of Race, Redemption, and Will Contests: Inheritance as Reparations in John Grisham’s Sycamore Row . 

2017

Linda H. Edwards William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Telling Stories in the Supreme Court: Voices Briefs and the Role of Democracy in Constitutional Deliberation . 

2016 Inaugural Recipient

Lucille Jewel University of Tennessee College of Law Old School Rhetoric and New School Cognitive Science: The Enduring Power of Logocentric Categories . 

Selection Committee

The Phelps Award Selection Committee includes legal writing scholars and prior award recipients. The Committee identifies eligible works, evaluates their contributions to the discipline of legal communication, and makes recommendations to the LWI Board of Directors.

The Legal Writing Institute is grateful to the members of each Selection Committee for their work identifying and recognizing outstanding discipline-building scholarship.