Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review, Second Edition (University Casebook Series) [Paperback]

Eugene Volokh (Author)

Book Description

Series: University Casebook Series | Publication Date: December 2004

This law school textbook is designed to help students write and publish their articles. Professor Volokh gives detailed instructions for every aspect of the writing, research, and publication process. Topics covered include law review articles and student notes, seminar term papers, knowing when to shift from research to writing, cite-checking others' work, publishing, and publicizing written works.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I plan to recommend Academic Legal Writing to my students, and I recommend it to you too." -- Isthatlegal.org

"I'd recommend it to any law student...who want(s) to polish their writing skills." -- Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law Professor

"If you have a sibling...in law school...buy them a copy of Academic Legal Writing." -- FindLaw's Writ, August 22, 2003

About the Author

Eugene Volokh is a Professor of Law at UCLA, where he teaches First Amendment law, copyright law, and firearms regulation policy. Before going into teaching, he clerked for Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski and for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Since 1995, he has published over 45 law review articles and over 80 op-eds in publications such as the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, and many others. He is also the author of The First Amendment, a textbook from Foundation Press, and he operates a daily Web log called The Volokh Conspiracy. Before going into law, he wrote over a dozen computer magazine articles about HP 3000 software.

His student article, Freedom of Speech and Workplace Harassment (UCLA L. Rev., 1992), has been cited in over 135 academic works and 10 court cases. A 2002 survey by University of Texas law professor Brian Leiter listed him as the third most-cited professor among those who entered law teaching after 1992 (with 810 citations in law reviews).

Product Details

• Paperback: 262 pages
• Publisher: Foundation Press; 2nd edition (December 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158778792X
• ISBN-13: 978-1587787928
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #415,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pragmatic, clear, systematic, and without equal, July 18, 2005

By 

Bart Motes (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review, Second Edition (University Casebook Series) (Paperback)

Former clerk to the Supreme Court and Professor at UCLA Eugene Volokh has given a remarkable gift to the legal community that would be a bargain at twice the price. It delivers pragmatic and thoughtful advice in a remarkably clear and lucid style. Moreover, it is not simply clear for law books--frankly, a low bar to pass--Volokh writes for the ordinary public daily on his eponymous blog (where you can read the first chapter of this book), and the skills required for that task manifest themselves in this work.

Academic Legal Writing is also extremely systematic. Every aspect of the paper is taken into consideration, from the approach to research, to avoiding off-putting humor or politically charged language, time tables for submissions, and so on, even including how to draft letters to professors and law reviews asking them to look over your work and to consider it for publication.

Academic Legal Writing is really in a class by itself. That said, perhaps I can indicate its greatness by invoking a few other names. Academic Legal Writing is a perfect companion volume to Bryan Gardner's The Elements of Legal Style. It is as clear and concise and accessible as Marvin Chirelstein's Concepts and Case Analysis in the Law of Contracts, and it deserves to be as ubiquitous and is certainly as valuable, thoughtful, and comprehensive as Joseph Glannon's E&E Civil Procedure and Erwin Chemerinsky's Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies. If you know these books, you should be going "wow." If you don't, and you are going to law school, I advise reading all of them. (Also Getting to Maybe, which I never found compelling, but am in the distinct minority view on.)

I read Elizabeth Fajans and Mary R. Falk's Scholarly Writing for Law Students, which is also good and which Volokh recommends. Academic Legal Writing appears to be a very conscious next step beyond that book. In a perfect world, buying and reading both would be advisable. In the real world, I read Scholarly Writing once, Academic Legal Writing many, many times. Academic Legal Writing is your desert island pick.

Please do yourself a favor and read this book. If you don't, you will simply be doing all of your competitors a likely unrequited kindness.

One final note: Professor Volokh is a conservative of the thoughtful and sober variety. I am a liberal of the sort who avidly studies the Endangered Species List to see if "Thoughtful Conservatives" have been listed yet. This is not an issue: Professor Volokh's political beliefs are discernible in this book only by the most careful parsing: in some of his examples, he points out the misleading use of statistics in gun violence, an academic preoccupation of his. You could then do the math and figure out that he has at least one conservative leaning. Otherwise, his politics would be utterly inscrutable. And, frankly, this book would be on my bookshelf even if Professor Volokh had say, written a memo arguing that the Geneva Conventions were outdated and pointless. John Yoo, your path to redemption is clear.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Strunk and White of Academic Legal Writing & Then Some, January 13, 2005

By 

Norman M. Garland "Professor Southwestern Law... (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review, Second Edition (University Casebook Series) (Paperback)

Last year I learned that Professor Eugene Volokh, a prolific and superb acamedician and author, had written a book with a blueprint for writing in law school and beyond. My expectation was that the book would be good, but I was awed by just how good it was. Prof. Volokh (pronounced "Volk" I am told) has done an enormous service for academics like myself who struggle to help students and young colleagues to learn the art of writing in the legal domain. That means papers for law school, articles for student publication, and beyond, when a person enters the profession and seeks to enhance his or her name. Now he has a second edition, adding two chaper: one on getting on to law review (a major benefit for law students), and the other advice on how to enter writing competitions.

Let me tell you how much I love this book. I bought ten copies of the first edition and distributed it to some of my students who I thought could benefit from it (although all can). My first choice to give one to was a protege of mine who was my research assistant, a moot court competitor (interscolastic), and a candidate for the law review board at the time. She advised me when I handed her the book, that it was required by all law review candidates--the board of editors run a program at my school and require the text.

Next, I have a colleague who had not been writiing. I gave a copy of the book to him and he seems to have moved on to produce a publishable piece. My wife, who went back to law school to get an LLM degree had to engage in some serious writing. I gave her a copy of the book and she got very high grades on her work and is considering turning one of them into an article.

So, when the new edition came out last week, I ordered 10 copies of it to spread the word again this year. I have been a professor of law for 37 years. I am thrilled that Professor Volokh saw fit to share his wisdom and insight into academic legal writing. Not since the original writing book that I learned from, Strunk and White's Elements of Style, has there been a book that I could recommend so heartily. If you are considering writing for law school or after, buy this book.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sin Qua Non, January 18, 2005

By 

Dennis N. Morgan "Nick" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review, Second Edition (University Casebook Series) (Paperback)

It would be foolish to attempt the daunting and complex feat of writing a publishable law review article without frequent reference to Professor Volokh's excellent book. Unlike many how-to books in any field, Academic Legal Writing doesn't waste time recycling conventional wisdom or dabbling too much in abstract talk of standards. It is full of fresh insights and eminently practical advice about the whole process of academic legal writing, from thesis selection to publication. An under-praised but no less valuable advantage of Volokh's book is that it channels a genuine enthusiasm for legal scholarship that I found completely contagious. Writing a law review article is a grueling, difficult, and sometimes tedious process. I can be sure that the quality of my article improved drastically simply because Academic Legal Writing kept me motivated by holding up the image of a superb article and its value to the writer and to the scholarly community. This book should be required reading for every member of the nation's law reviews, and if I felt uppity enough, I might even recommend it to my law professors.