Professor Eugene Volokh has posted several valuable tips on the Volokh Conspiracy about how to succeed during the law-review write-on process.  If you haven’t read some of his longer works on academic legal writing, I highly recommend the following:

• Eugene Volokh, Writing a Student Article, 48 J. Legal Educ. 247 (1998) (available on HeinOnline to SCU students and faculty).
• Eugene Volokh, Test Suites: A Tool for Improving Student Articles, 52 J. Legal Educ. 440 (2002).
• EUGENE VOLOKH, ACADEMIC LEGAL WRITING: LAW REVIEW ARTICLES, STUDENT NOTES, SEMINAR PAPERS, AND GETTING ON LAW REVIEW (2005) (available at Heafey).

3L Epiphany continues to explore the impact of blogging on legal scholarship with this post, which lists law review articles that cite to blogs as well as the blogs cited most frequently by law review articles. 

An article in the September 8^th Chronicle of Higher Education lists the "Seven Deadly Sins of Student Writers." It is written by Ben Yagoda, Professor of English at the University of Delaware and the author of a forthcoming book entitled When you catch an adjective, kill it. Law students might also be interested in what he has to say about dangling modifiers, punctuation, spell-check errors, etc.

He notes in his conclusion, "Reading a lot is the only way to get a deep-seated understanding of the way punctuation is meant to be used, of spelling, of the construction of complex sentences, and of the meaning of the words that you might use in your own writing. Skilled writers profit from a continuously looping, subliminal soundtrack of all the sentences they’ve ever read." This may be an unexpected benefit of all the reading that the average law student is expected to complete each week: a full soundtrack to draw on when writing legal briefs and memoranda.

The Chronicle of Higher Education is available on Lexis (NEWS;CHEDUC) and Westlaw (CHONHIGHED).

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered aired a story this week about a Canadian contract dispute that turns on the placement of a single comma in a 14-page contract between a cable television company and a telephone company. Robert Siegel’s interview with Richard Janda, a McGill University law professor, is available online at the NPR website. Additional coverage appears in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

Telecom Decision CRTC 2006-45 concerning the dispute between Aliant Telecom Inc. and Rogers Cable Communications Inc. is available at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission website. Rogers has appealed the decision with help from Kenneth A. Adams whose recent book on contract language is available at the Heafey Law Library.

Legal writing author and speaker Bryan Garner has posted a set of extended interviews he conducted with eight of the nine current U.S. Supreme Court justices on legal writing, advocacy, and the court's process. These are fascinating viewing for all interested in the Court or legal writing. (Note that these are Windows Media files, the .wmv extension. Mac users will need a wmv plug-in to watch these files.)

Thanks to: The Volokh Conspiracy blog

Today’s Law Librarian Blog links to the Transitioning from One-L to Summer Legal Work podcast series hosted by the Suffolk Law Legal Practice Skills Program. Individual podcasts in the series focus on topics such as Cost Effective Legal Research Skills, Time Management, Working in a Judge’s Chambers, and Editing in the Legal Workplace. According to the Blog, the podcasts are appropriate for recent graduates as well as One-Ls.

From the site:

The Journal of Legal Analysis is now accepting submissions. Tentatively scheduled to begin publication in the Fall of 2008, the JLA aspires to publish the best of legal scholarship. The JLA welcomes social scientific research, but will not limit itself to such work. Instead, the journal will publish law-related articles from all disciplinary perspectives.

JLA will be faculty-edited and refereed, and published by the Harvard University Press. It will be available free of charge on the web; hard copies will be available for purchase on demand.

Manuscripts should be sent by email to J. Mark Ramseyer, at ramseyer@law.harvard.edu. Generally, they should not exceed 70 double-spaced pages (12-point type) and should be in Word or pdf. Exclusive submission is required.

Manuscripts may be submitted initially in any citation form. The final published version, however, should cite to books and articles in the standard social-scientific manner--i.e., textual parentheticals with full bibliographic entries at the end of the article. The article should cite to cases and statutes according to A Uniform System of Citation (the blue-book). A detailed style-sheet will be available soon.

There has been a considerable amount of controversy created by a recent Harvard Law Review note entitled, "Never Again Should A People Starve in a World of Plenty".   The article heavily criticizes the pursuit of "big-firm" employment over public interest and social justice law.  It has been critiqued by a number of notable conservatives and libertarians within legal blogs.

Never Should A People Starve in a World of Plenty -- Harvard Law Review

Working in Big Law = Killing Babies? -- Above the Law

The Harvard Law Review's New Home?  -- Above the Law

Bizarre Harvard Law Review Note -- Volokh Conspiracy

Does the World Need More "Traditional Legal Analysis" in Law Review Notes?  -- Concurring Opinions

More HLR Shenanigans? -- Prettier than Napoleon

A new article entitled, "Training Independent Learners: Student Self-Editing Checklist for Law School Papers, Notes and Comments" is now available on SSRN.  Written by faculty at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, the articles lists many of the most basic principles of good, clear writing and many of the most common flaws in students' papers. It requires the student to certify, by signing and noting the date and time, that the student has checked the paper for each of the points listed.  This may be a great resource for students needing help with their editing skills.

(h/t to Law Librarian Blog)

The New York Times has an interesting article about the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and its increasing influence on academic legal publishing.  A new feature on the SSRN which tallies downloads of each article is being used by professors, and others, to gauge the impact of articles before actual publication.  The NY Times also comments how the increased accessibility of legal publishing, through technologies such as the SSRN, is expanding the audience and impact of these materials.

Now professors get their star rankings too -- New York Times