Legal Writing

Supreme Court backlog is the largest in percentage terms since at least 1950

More than half of the cases on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket have yet to be decided. As of Friday, the court had 33 opinions remaining, which amounts to 53% of its argued cases this term.

Jun 3, 2022 9:37 AM CDT

How to verify proper spelling and understand that words change over time

A law office is a kind of publishing house. We issue legal documents to be read sometimes by small audiences, sometimes by large ones. Because we’re a literary profession, we want to get things right.

Jun 1, 2022 2:00 AM CDT

John Lennon’s lawyer turns paperback writer to recount little-known case

Jay Bergen’s representation of Lennon always made for a good story, last month he shared the case on a grander scale. He published Lennon, the Mobster & the Lawyer—The Untold Story, which recounts his representation of Lennon.

May 31, 2022 2:39 PM CDT

Work for Canadian residential school survivors informs lawyer’s debut novel

A lawyer explains how her work informed the writing of her book and why many Indigenous people still feel the impact of the Canadian school system to this day.

May 25, 2022 8:33 AM CDT

How is ‘amicus’ pronounced? Justice Breyer and Judge Jackson disagree with each other and the majority view

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was once a law clerk for the justice she will replace, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, but she didn’t adopt his pronunciation of “amicus.”

Apr 28, 2022 1:43 PM CDT

Duped: New book explores what makes people confess to crimes they didn’t commit

Hanging on a wall in Saul Kassin’s office at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City are photos of 28 people who confessed to crimes they didn’t commit. He periodically updates this collection, which he calls his “wall of faces,” as more false confessions come to light. Kassin has written a new book exploring this phenomenon, Duped: Why Innocent People Confess and Why We Believe Their Confessions.

Apr 1, 2022 1:40 AM CDT

Grammar Rules: The case of the unhyphenated phrasal adjectives

Before this honorable court is the complaint of Marian Short-Dash, who accuses her local newspaper, the Blunderbuss Clarion, of omitting “obligatory hyphens” from phrasal adjectives, thereby impairing her ability to read without annoyance.

Apr 1, 2022 1:10 AM CDT

After Supreme Court copyright fight, Georgia makes annotated legal code freely available

Georgia capped a yearslong legal fight over whether interpretations of its official state code are copyrightable, announcing Monday that the annotated legal code is now available online for free.

Mar 23, 2022 8:58 AM CDT

The justice system is the antagonist in retired judge’s legal thriller novel

Retired judge and bestselling novelist Martin Clark had to deal with his fair share of rejection before he finally broke in more than two decades ago with his debut novel, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living.

Mar 16, 2022 8:35 AM CDT

Tough decision to make? Here’s how to break it down like a lawyer

Law professor Kim Wehle is used to helping her students begin to think like lawyers. But the methodology behind making tough decisions as a legal professional can also benefit the general public. It's why How To Think Like a Lawyer—and Why: A Common-Sense Guide to Everyday Dilemmas was a natural follow-up to her two previous books, How To Read the Constitution—and Why and What You Need To Know About Voting—and Why.

Feb 23, 2022 8:55 AM CST

A few ‘begats’ and ‘thou shalts’: An abbreviated history of lawyers

Where are the lawyers? As a retired one, I recently wondered about this, querying where in history we see lawyers mentioned and in what light? Actually, after thinking about it, I see little or no sign of lawyers for millennia.

Feb 15, 2022 11:31 AM CST

The word ‘he’ is ‘not the default universal personal pronoun,’ judge says

A Florida appeals judge used her dissent last week to criticize a lawyer who used a male pronoun to refer to her in court papers.

Jan 27, 2022 11:21 AM CST

Need to sharpen your legal writing? 10th Circuit Court judge shares his tips

There's plenty of conventional wisdom about what makes a good legal brief or court opinion. Judge Robert E. Bacharach of the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says when judges socialize, their conversations often devolve into discussions about language and pieces of writing that they enjoy or revile.

Jan 26, 2022 8:41 AM CST

Did Gorsuch misstate the number of flu deaths? The transcript—not the justice—was wrong

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday issued a corrected transcript of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s oral arguments comment about flu deaths after some observers claimed that he overstated the numbers.

Jan 11, 2022 9:26 AM CST

Lawyer pens book about multiple personality disorder murder case that haunts him

“Just in the Nick of Time” is part memoir, part courtroom drama and part medical mystery that examines whether David Savitz’s handsome, charming client had a real psychiatric disorder or was a crafty manipulator trying to fake his way out of a murder conviction.

Jan 4, 2022 10:28 AM CST