Bibliographies

Bibliographies are an essential resource for professors who engage in legal writing scholarship: they help the researcher get up to speed more efficiently, and they alert the writer to ground that has already been well covered by others. Following are a few particularly helpful bibliographies, including several that trace the history of legal writing scholarship and others that collect scholarly resources in specific topic areas.

History of Legal Writing Scholarship

A rhetorical history written for the 25th anniversary of LWI lists the early bibliographies: The Past, Presence, and Future of Legal Writing Scholarship: Rhetoric, Voice, and Community, 16 J. Legal Writing 521 (Linda L. Berger, Linda H. Edwards & Terrill Pollman) (2010).  Among these are the following:

  • Bibliography of Books, Articles, and Periodicals on Legal Writing Programs and Instruction, to accompany Commun. Skills Comm., Sec. Leg. Educ. & Admis. to B., Sourcebook on Legal Writing Programs (Eric B. Easton ed., 2d ed., ABA 2006) (bibliography available here).
  • Terrill Pollman & Linda H. Edwards, Scholarship by Legal Writing Professors: New Voices in the Legal Academy, 11 Leg. Writing 3, 15 (2005).
  • Michael R. Smith, The Next Frontier: Exploring the Substance of Legal Writing, 2 J. ALWD 1 (2004).
  • James R. Elkins, Teaching Lawyers to Write: A Chronological Bibliography, 22 Leg. Stud. Forum 778 (1998).
  • George D. Gopen & Kary D. Smout, Legal Writing: A Bibliography, 1 Leg. Writing 93 (1991).
  • Terence Collins & Darryl Hattenburger, Law and Language: A Selected Annotated Bibliography on Legal Writing, 33 J. Leg. Educ. 141 (1983).

Monograph Series

LWI’s Monograph Series provides an introduction to disciplinary foundations, often by identifying important early articles on a topic and sometimes by highlighting recent innovations. Scholars can get up to date quickly by consulting the Monograph Series, currently at five volumes, including a new teachers’ desk book, best practices for providing feedback, teaching theory, rhetoric theory and application, and advanced legal writing courses.

Topic-Specific Bibliographies