Thursday, July 17, 2008
Session 1, 9:30-10:15am
Defining the Purpose and Parameters of Scholarship for Legal Writing Professors
Mitchell Nathanson, Kristen Triscione, Linda Berger
Program Code: R1A
Why should legal research and writing faculty bother to publish? Do we have a shared sense of what makes scholarship valuable? Is there a substantive doctrine of legal research and writing for us to write about? A panel of faculty from three different law schools will focus first on why legal research and writing faculty should publish even in the absence of scholarship requirements, and second, on developing a working definition of good scholarship. The discussion will conclude with an attempt to articulate whether there is an identifiable field of legal research and writing for us to write about and whether we should publish in any and all fields of interest. It is hoped that we will engage in a larger group discussion on how to put our profession’s best foot forward in the context of the legal academy.