UPDATED MARCH 8, 2025 to post a manuscript that has the right version of Chapter 10! As of March 8, 2025, the most updated version of the manuscript says Compiled: March 8, 2025 on the cover. As I noted in a blog post back in 2023, I signed a contract with the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) to manage the editing of an open educational resource (OER) textbook for legal writing in spring 2023. It will be the first general legal-writing text from CALI's eLangdell press. OER texts are available free of charge and can be remixed and reused under a Creative Commons license. Students who want a print copy will be able to order one, basically at cost, from CALI, but the text is most powerful in its electronic form, thanks to active linking among sections. Below is the downloadable draft, which I'm calling the antepenultimate draft (a) because I don't often get to use words like 'antepenultimate' and (b) because I expect there will be one more working draft before the final draft comes out in May. It's important to understand a few things about this version: The note to teachers in Chapter 0 of the text explains our rationale for the volume and what we are working on before releasing the final version of the volume in May 2025, including our plans for proofreading, the Teaching Manual (due out in summer), etc. It also gives you an example of how I used the text in the first-semester 1L legal writing course at Texas A&M University (which has a twelve-week semester). The file is large, a little over 28 MB. The chapters are all substantively complete, but we will continue proofreading and editing. We do not expect any chapter or section numbers to change, however. There is no cover (unlike some previous versions) because we are still working on a cover design. The links in the text PDF work, except that at the moment, the PDF’s bookmark TOC, normally available in Acrobat from the Bookmarks tab and in Mac Preview from the View menu / Table of Contents option, is broken due to a coding problem we are trying to sort out. If you have questions or comments about the text, please post them in the comments! Thanks! -Brian Download the whole file or view it in the window below. [pdf-embedder url=https://rhetoricked.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Legal_Argumentation-March-8.pdf title=Legal_Argumentation March 8]
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UPDATED MARCH 8, 2025 to post a manuscript that has the right version of Chapter 10! As of March 8, 2025, the most updated version…
1.3.2025 19:11Comment on Legal Argumentation: Fall 2023 draft OER text by Brian Larson(Updated Aug 8 with the current reference version and link to change log.) In spring 2023, I signed a contract with the Center for Computer-Assisted…
5.8.2023 14:37Comment on Legal Argumentation (2021 ed., fall 2020 version) by Brian LarsonI often read works in #LegalScholarship that exhibit ignorance of the considerable scholarship on the same topics in other fields. It’s as if legal scholars are trapped in the #LawReview searches on #Westlaw #Lexis and #HeinOnline. For example, in #LegalWriting #LRW scholarship, I note that scholars fail to check the research on related topics done in fields such as #rhetoric, #composition, #WritingStudies, and #TechnicalCommunication. Even if legal scholarship refers out to such scholarship, it often fails to consider the conversational context in which that scholarship falls: For example, citing or relying a book in another field without reviewing and considering Read More ...
8.12.2022 16:33Legal scholars using Google Scholar for inter/multi/cross disciplinary researchImagine that you enter a parlor. . . . When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. . . . You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer [them]; another comes to your defense . . . . However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. Philosophy of Literary Form Read More ...
22.7.2022 15:06Burke on the conversationAntonio's ideas about peer evaluation inspire me to rethink aspects of my own peer-review pedagogy. My thinking associated with the latter appears in another blog post: https://rhetoricked.com/2021/12/03/centering-students-rhetorical-knowledge/
6.3.2022 22:42Comment on The “Why are you here?” of Legal Writing and Rhetoric by Brian LarsonThis post includes the video and handouts for for the session titled The “Why are you here?” of Legal Writing and Rhetoric, an on-demand session at the 2022 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), March 2022. This post includes the video of each of our three presenters and then also a video of a discussion among them with our chair/discussant. The videos will remain here indefinitely (CCCC is taking down its videos as of June 2022). This post includes our proposal with a summary of the sessions, followed by the individual videos and the group video. If you have Read More ...
22.2.2022 13:07The “Why are you here?” of Legal Writing and RhetoricThis post includes the slides and transcript from my comments at the upcoming AALS LWRR session on Thursday, January 6, 2022, titled “Contemporary Scholarly Methods and Works-In-Progress in Legal Communication.”
4.1.2022 20:43Contemporary Scholarly Methods (AALS LWRR session)In reply to <a href="https://rhetoricked.com/2021/10/17/tabbing-your-alwd-guide/#comment-11038">Brian Larson</a>. Thank you for taking the time out to respond. I look forward to the tabs for Bluebook. Thanks again. - Shaul
2.1.2022 03:57Comment on Tabbing your ALWD Guide: Not citation Nirvana, but close by ShaulIn reply to <a href="https://rhetoricked.com/2021/10/17/tabbing-your-alwd-guide/#comment-11035">Shaul</a>. Shaul: I'm glad this was useful for you. I expect to post the tabs for Bluebook in the next week or two. Stay tuned! -Brian
27.12.2021 13:55Comment on Tabbing your ALWD Guide: Not citation Nirvana, but close by Brian LarsonI am currently a 1L heading into my second semester, and this ALWD "how to" guide really aided me with tabbing. You stated that you hoped to post a tab list and tab location guide before the end of 2021 for those who want them. I was wondering are they available, because they would really help out a lot. Thanks for the info.
24.12.2021 20:40Comment on Tabbing your ALWD Guide: Not citation Nirvana, but close by Shaul[…] I describe the Eli Review peer-review platform and the D-E-S approach in a blog post associated with demonstrations of Eli Review I performed in summer […]
4.12.2021 16:42Comment on Demo of online peer-review tool Eli Review by Centering students’ rhetorical knowledge: The community of inquiry as formative assessment – ...[…] [5] I begin the semester by having students read a case that involves one of my relatives, a pedagogical approach that I discuss in a blog post. […]
3.12.2021 17:24Comment on What my 88-year-old aunt can help teach my law students by Centering students’ rhetorical knowledge: The community of inquiry as formative ...(Slightly updated December 4, 2021 with additional references.) In her book, Strategies and Techniques for Integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into the Core Law Curriculum, Professor Teri McMurtry-Chubb (2022, p. 62) suggests a wide variety of interventions for law teachers seeking to “acknowledge the experiences of minoritized students and faculty and [to] seriously grappl[e] with their legal and societal implications.” She also expressly embraces the “community of inquiry” framework, which has received attention in the scholarly literature relating to the pedagogy of writing (see, e.g., Stewart, 2018). This essay describes an approach to peer review and classroom workshopping intended to develop Read More ...
3.12.2021 17:24Centering students’ rhetorical knowledge: The community of inquiry as formative assessment[…] About me […]
1.12.2021 17:59Comment on About by — NIMBLE FOUNDATION BLOG - STAY SAFE!For the ALWD Guide to achieve its full utility, you should adopt a system of tabbing it to make content more accessible. Over the last several years, I've developed such a system to use for my teaching and the occasional consulting work I do as of-counsel for my old log firm. Students say that they have found it useful for locating answers in the guide quickly. This video provides detailed instructions for how to do that. Read More ...
17.10.2021 11:00Tabbing your ALWD Guide: Not citation Nirvana, but closeMy aunt Kate Miller died on September 17 at age 88. Though I can’t say I was close to her, her experiences serve as part of an important lesson for my law students every year. Circumstances kept my nuclear family far away from the rest of my parents’ large families while I was growing up. “Katie,” as I knew her, was in my father’s high-school class and married my father’s brother Merlyn Larson in 1958. In my early days, I was likely to see her only at family holiday gatherings. I rarely saw her children, except the eldest, my cousin Read More ...
22.9.2021 16:27What my 88-year-old aunt can help teach my law studentsStetson University School of Law’s Institute for the Advancement of Legal Communication sponsored a provocative presentation by Dr. Asao Inoue regarding anti-racist writing assessment on August 20. Though Inoue’s scholarly focus has been on the undergraduate curriculum, he directed his talk at some specific issues of legal-writing pedagogy. I posted on the Legal Writing listserv, noting: The talk was provocative and closely examined some challenges of adapting Inoue’s approach to the law-school and legal-writing classrooms…. I have tried some of these techniques with success (and some with less success), but there is much, much more I could be doing. Thanks Read More ...
21.8.2021 16:50Anti-racist writing assessment in the law