Academic Success

Beyond the First Draft helps law students approach the often difficult task of editing their own writing. Each chapter is organized around one of the principles of good writing and begins with an editing checklist for accomplishing that principle of good writing.

With concise and easy-to-follow instructions, a variety of annotated examples, and the clarifying concept of "anchors," the Handbook is a student-centered text that engages and accompanies students throughout the first-year legal writing course, and beyond.
1 e-book copy also available

The Legal Writing Companion is a practical, helpful guide for the new legal writer, designed to address common problems and demonstrate how and why to make effective choices to solve them. The second edition offers additional examples based on a complex federal statutory issue to supplement the first edition's common law examples.

Persuasive Written and Oral Advocacy gives students a clear and practical guide to legal writing and oral argument, from the selection of a main theme, to the employment of research, language, and speaking skills that achieve a clear, persuasive legal message. Step-by-step, they learn to organize, prepare, and present winning written and oral arguments.

The Pre-Writing Handbook for Law Students describes a detailed, systematic approach to the task of analyzing a legal problem. The Handbook is designed to help students focus on and become competent in the process of legal analysis that precedes their work on early legal writing products such as memos, case briefs, and other documents.

This book is designed to help train law students in the skills needed for successful transactional lawyering. Through carefully designed text and exercises, the book helps students understand and strategically use the different types of contract terms, translate deal terms to precise contract language, use forms appropriately, and spot and resolve ambiguity.

Covering predictive writing, persuasive writing, and correspondence, this Survival Guide offers practical tips, tricks, and tactics that are critical to any legal writing assignment. It also includes clear illustrations and solutions to common grammar, punctuation, citation, and style issues.

Each major section of the book starts with an explanation of a core concept of good writing and is followed by numerous exercises. By working through these illustrative exercises, you'll learn how to write concise, powerful sentences and structure them into paragraphs that create clear and persuasive legal documents, letters, and other written communication.

This Short and Happy Guide takes you through the history, meaning, and purpose of legal writing in the American law. You will learn the essential form and substance necessary to craft an inter-office legal memo, helpful ideas for persuasive brief-writing, and tips for excelling in legal writing.

This book provides a ten-step guide to clear, precise, and effective legal writing and analysis. It gives the keys to writing legal memoranda and briefs, organizing analyses, crafting clear and concise sentences, using legal language accurately, using grammar and punctuation properly, and writing persuasively using classical rhetorical techniques.

The Bluebook is the definitive style guide for legal citation in the United States. In a diverse and rapidly changing legal profession, it continues to provide a systematic method by which members of the profession communicate about the sources and legal authorities upon which they rely in their work.

Organizing legal citation into 40 thoroughly cogent and illustrated rules, the Guide is the ideal reference for American legal citation. The clear explanations, examples, diagrams, and quick-reference tables in the Guide make researching legal citation efficient and stress-free for all.

The Writing Manual is a comprehensive guide to judicial opinion writing published by the court and is widely used as the standard for drafting briefs and pleadings. The third edition includes updates designed to improve the readability of opinions issued by, and briefs filed in, the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Ohio Court of Appeals.

The Bluebook provides the rules for legal citation, but it can be intimidating and frustrating to use. With its simple building-block approach, this survival manual teaches how to understand and master the essential rules for legal practitioners.