The Scholarship Development Committee's charge is to provide outreach and resources to foster and support scholarship by legal writing professors and encourage scholarly collaborations with the larger legal academy.
Writing groups
The committee works to bring attention to timely topics to advance scholarship within the legal writing, research, and analysis community. We are gathering information here about members' interest in writing groups and related writing support. Writing groups can take several forms; see this post from Inside Higher Ed: Inside Higher Ed. The key issue is whether they actually help their members overcome the challenges they face and become the most productive scholars they can be. As Kerry Ann Rockquemore, author of that piece, notes:
Academic writers have lots of different needs. For example, some people need to physically share space with others while writing, some need a stern authority figure to answer to, some need solitude and the kind of support that is silent, some need a quantitative accounting of their progress, some need to be in groups with similar others, some need to be regularly inspired, some need ongoing substantive feedback by those in their specialty field, some need regular cheerleading, some need therapy, and some need an occasional exorcism (from the demons of bad academic socialization). It’s even OK if you need all of these things at different times! The important thing is to identify what you need without judgment, shame, or self-flagellation.
You do not need to share your name to submit your answers. When the LWI Scholarship Development Committee determines whether and how to proceed with writing support/writing groups, it will post that information on the LWI listserv.
Upcoming academic conferences and scholarship opportunities
Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD is a peer-reviewed journal and invites submissions for its fall 2020 issue. Submissions can be "essays" (2,500-5,000 words) or full articles (5,000-15,000 words, considerably shorter than typical law-review articles) and are due September 1, 2019. Details here.
Legal Writing: Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, is seeking submissions of articles (variable length) and essays (500-3,000 words, but flexible) for its Vol. 24. Submission information here. An email from Liz Frost, one of the journal's editors, to the listserv on May 16 invited particular attention to professional status issues for legal writing faculty. Submissions are due September 2, 2019.
In conjunction with Central States Legal Writing Conference from September 12-13, 2019 in Chicago, there will be an ALWD Writer’s Workshop from 8:30am - 1pm on Sept. 12. You can register for the conference (free of charge) using this link.
Resources
LWI website resources
LWI Scholarship Development Committee's Friendly Feedback database
- You can find folks in our field willing to mentor/review the scholarship of peers in anticipation of its submission. The list is continually updated: http://bit.ly/LWIScholars
- If you want to be a mentor, sign up using this Google form. Check this list if you are unsure whether you've already signed up.
Submitting articles
Rostron & Levit, Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews & Journals, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1019029
If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to any member of the committee.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Elliott Vinson, Suffolk, Co-chair
Kristen Murray, Temple, Co-chair
Alyssa Dragnich, Arizona State
Tamara Herrera, Arizona State
Brian Larson, Texas A&M
Susan McMahon, Georgetown
L. Danielle Tully, Suffolk
Kirsten Davis, Stetson, LWI board liaison