Last post, I shared part of a great list of ten brief-writing tips from the Hon. Terrence L. Michael, Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma and a member of the Bankruptcy…
Continue Reading Judge Michael’s Brief-Writing Tips, Part 2

It seems like everywhere I look I am hearing something about generative AI. Lawyers are freaking out that we will be replaced, judges are freaking out that attorneys are over relying on it, and academics are freaking out about how…
Continue Reading Can AI prepare me for a clerkship interview?

I am a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and one of my favorite lines comes from Thor in Avengers: Infinity War. Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy are trying to stop the mad Titan Thanos from destroying…
Continue Reading All Words are Made Up: Thoughts on Using Dictionaries for Statutory Interpretation

Each week, the Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup presents a few tidbits of news and Twitter posts from the past week concerning appellate advocacy. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure…
Continue Reading Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Friday, August 4, 2023

I clerked for three years before entering private practice. It was easy to be a sponge and soak up the good tactics of the attorneys I observed, the procedures of the courts where I worked, and familiarity with new areas…
Continue Reading "You Write Like a Law Clerk." Ouch.

Because my teaching typically focuses on appellate advocacy, I rarely teach 1Ls. In fact, I have NEVER taught a first year legal writing class–that is until this year. Yes, this year I will be teaching a fall section of first…
Continue Reading Advice to 1Ls

Several times over the past couple of years, I agreed to join an appellate team in a case to help finish the reply brief and make the argument. Its not the optimal way to take on an appeal. Limited time,…
Continue Reading Sometimes a Reply Brief Should Explore a New Path

For my appellate brief writing class, I choose a pending SCOTUS case for the students to write a brief for. This past year, I chose two trademark cases: Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts v. Goldsmith and Jack Daniel’s Properties,…
Continue Reading Making your point at different levels

Each week, the Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup presents a few tidbits of news and Twitter posts from the past week concerning appellate advocacy. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure…
Continue Reading Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Friday, July 21, 2023

One of my exciting (yes, really) summer projects is to help with a Legal Writing textbook, including drafting a chapter on trial briefs. In looking at state and local rules on what trial briefs should contain, I found a great…
Continue Reading Judge Michael’s Brief-Writing Tips, Part 1

We’ve all read legal writing that is stilted and choppy. Though it may not affect the validity of the arguments made, it does make reading uncomfortable and detracts from the writer’s ethos. While short sentences come in handy when seeking…
Continue Reading All I Need to Know About Flow I Learned from Pink

I am on a great American road trip for the next two weeks, so I am sharing this post on statutory interpretation from 2020. Almost three years ago, I posted about a statutory interpretation case out of the Washington Supreme…
Continue Reading The meaning of "and"

Admittedly, I was at a loss today about what topic to write about on this blog. But then I thought about the debate that I had with Robert Peck and Phillip Seaver-Hall regarding originalism. That debate was an example of…
Continue Reading Reflections on the Originalism Debate