Originality and Contribution to the Legal Field

• Legal writing should have a goal and recommend a means to achieve that goal.
• Articles should share new ideas about law with the legal community.
• Successful scholarly legal writing says something innovative.
• Be sure to run a thorough preemption check on your topic before you begin research.

Importance of Topic

• Writing should make a claim that is novel, non-obvious, useful, sound, and seen by the reader as such.
• Topics should either:
  - analyze conflicting or transitional case law and resolve the conflict;
  - argue that a legal rule is unfair or inequitable;
  - analyze proposed or recently enacted legislation with comments and criticism;
  - apply insights from another field to show how the legal issue can be better dealt with; or
  - explain the legal history of a rule or institution.

Quality

• Use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
• Avoid awkward and verbose sentences.
• Writing should read smoothly and provide concise, thoughtful, and authoritative analysis.

Thoroughness

• Consider all sides of the issue--articulate your position forcefully, but treat contrary arguments seriously and respectfully.
• Read and cite original sources.
• Continuously update your research during writing and before submission.

Well Written

• Writers should avoid redundancy.
• Articles should take a clear position on the issue addressed and discuss and resolve the relevant issue.
• To persuade the reader, answer discrete questions fully rather than broad questions shallowly.
• Ideas should show that you grasp the subject matter and should be presented in logical sequence with coherent paragraph organization and sentence structure.

Currency

• Your topic should be current and relevant to the present legal climate.
• If the article proposes something, it should be feasible in the near future.

Footnotes

• The text and the footnotes should support each other.
• Footnotes should be used to support, expand, and clarify.
• Footnotes should be of use to the reader and should not make up for textual inadequacies.
• Readers should not have to refer to the footnote to understand the text.

Professors Snyder, Postar, and Roddy discuss what makes a good paper, what makes a publishable paper and how to submit to law reviews.  This workshop was held on February 3, 2021. View the Workshop here.

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