{"id":50164,"date":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/supreme\/legal-commentary\/a-superb-stylebook-for-law-professors-and-students-alike-eugene-volokhs-academic-legal-writing.html"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","slug":"a-superb-stylebook-for-law-professors-and-students-alike-eugene-volokhs-academic-legal-writing","status":"publish","type":"supreme","link":"https:\/\/supreme.findlaw.com\/legal-commentary\/a-superb-stylebook-for-law-professors-and-students-alike-eugene-volokhs-academic-legal-writing.html","title":{"rendered":"A Superb Stylebook for Law Professors and Students Alike: Eugene Volokh’s Academic Legal Writing<\/u>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A Superb Stylebook for Law Professors and Students Alike:<\/h1><\/span>
Eugene Volokh’s Academic Legal Writing<\/u><\/span>
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By MATTHEW HERRINGTON<\/h2>
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Friday, Aug. 22, 2003
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Were I a better person, I would no doubt be familiar with the entire genre of stylebooks, from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style<\/i> onward. When faced with any thorny question of writing style, I would be able to pull down from a ready shelf a dog-eared copy of the canonical volume that had seen me through from law school to private practice. <\/p>\n\n

Were I a worse person, I would pretend that I had read such volumes in the past, and draw a comparisons to them characterized by such sweeping breadth as to make them untestable. <\/p>\n\n

Alas, I am neither. Here is the truth. I vaguely remember a slim volume on legal writing that was foisted on me by the textbook-industrial complex (along with the obligatory copy of Black’s Law Dictionary<\/i>) as I was purchasing my first term books. However, my next and final recollection of that book was in connection with the law school’s dorm furniture, which suffered from deficiencies both aesthetic and functional. My newly purchased style book was assigned to true up an otherwise tippy writing desk. <\/p>\n\n

No doubt my friends and classmates who have gone on to celebrated professorships gave their<\/u> stylebooks close study. I did not, though I appreciated the steadying, silent, service it rendered.<\/p>\n\n

That brings me to the topic of today’s review – the first legal stylebook I have ever actually perused. It is entitled Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, and Seminar Papers<\/u>. Its author is Eugene Volokh, a hotshot professor at UCLA Law School.<\/i><\/p>\n\n

Having now, for the first time, carefully read a style book, I now see the error of my ways. If you have a sibling, a child, a friend, even a distant acquaintance, in law school or trying to get something published in a legal publication, buy them a copy of Academic Legal Writing<\/u>. <\/p>\n\n

Sit there and force them to read it, and perhaps you might also provide a handful of matchbooks for use as furniture-steadying aids. <\/i> Professor Volokh has distilled into 163 pages a very smart professor’s learning on two important areas of concern to anyone involved or interested in legal academic writing: How to write good papers, and how to get them published. <\/p>\n\n

Excellent Advice on Choosing a Topic<\/b><\/p>\n\n

The first chapters of the book provide common sense solutions to the bane of nearly all law students and most would-be legal scholars: how to find a topic – or, as Professor Volokh would put it, how to find a claim. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n\nSharp Guidance on the Writing Process<\/b><\/p>\n\n

The middle chapters of Academic Legal Writing<\/u> cover what I would guess to be the traditional subject matter of a stylebook: how to write well. Most of the rules the book covers are traditional and timeless, but they are also often ignored. Accordingly, anyone writing (whether one’s audience is a court or the academy) would benefit from reading Professor Volokh’s crisp recounting of the basics that are so often forgotten by legal writers. <\/p>\n\n

Here, for instance, is a little late-summer refresher – drawn from Volokh – of the rules we all know, all break, and would be better off if we all followed: <\/p>\n\n