Workshop for New Law Teachers

June 21–23, 2001
Alexandria, Virginia

Back to Workshop Program

Rachel F. Moran

1. Introduction
2. Finding your topic
   1. Building on your strengths
   2. Assessing your own interests and commitments
   3. Building synergy with your teaching
   4. Keeping an idea file
   5. Drawing effectively on the literature
   6. Situating yourself in the scholarly debate
3. Finding your voice
   1. Different scholarly traditions
      1. Doctrinal scholarship
      2. Other forms of scholarship
         1. Interdisciplinary
         2. Empirical
         3. Perspectival
   2. Different scholarly formats
      1. Law review publications
      2. Other kinds of publications
4. Finding your way
   1. Making space for research and writing
   2. Using law school resources effectively
   3. Finding resources outside the law school
5. Finding your audience
   1. Before publication
   2. After publication
6. Conclusion

CHECKLIST FOR PARTICIPANTS

To take maximum advantage of this part of the Workshop, you should review the following checklist and try to respond to as many of the items as you feel comfortable addressing. Then, as the Workshop proceeds, you can note any strategies or considerations that might be important to you but that you did not include in your responses.

1. Generate a list of potential topics that you might like to write about. If possible, rank them in order of how promising they are as research possibilities. Consider how these topics might fit into a scholarly agenda and whether some provide building blocks for later articles. NOTE: If you will not begin teaching till 2000-01 and so do not yet have a list of topics, think about how you will generate such a list during your first year of teaching.

2. Create a research plan for developing the most promising topic. The plan should include the kind of sources upon which you intend to draw, a timetable for gathering and reviewing these materials, and a timetable for writing a first draft of the paper. If you expect to use a research assistant, the plan should address what sort of tasks the assistant will perform.

3. If you are far enough along, you may want to prepare a rough outline of your paper along with the research plan. Think about colleagues or friends with whom you might brainstorm to assure yourself that the topic is as promising as you believe it to be. Once you are confident of the parameters of your topic, you can use the outline to create a set of deadlines for completion of each section. Of course, the outline and timetable are flexible, as unexpected developments can occur, but they will help to keep you on track.

4. Consider how you will get feedback on your paper once you have a polished draft in hand. Think about “friendly” readers whom you might trust to look at an early draft of the manuscript. Ask yourself whether there are other individuals who should read the paper later, when it is at a more advanced stage of development. Also consider whether there are conferences and colloquia that would offer a comfortable and constructive environment in which to present a draft.

5. Think about when and where you would like to have your paper placed. Do you want it to appear in a general law journal or a specialty journal of some kind? Are you thinking of other venues for publishing your work? If so, how are these alternative venues likely to be perceived by your colleagues?

6. After the paper is published, how you will ensure that it is disseminated to colleagues and scholars in the field? How will you put together a list of people to whom to send reprints? Are there other ways to get attention for your article, such as on-line announcements in specialty fields? Do you know how to get your article listed in your law school’s list of recent faculty publications?

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Robert H. Abrams, Sing Muse: Legal Scholarship for New Law Teachers, 37 J. Legal Educ. 1 (1987)

Roger C. Cramton, Demystifying Legal Scholarship, 75 Geo. L.J. 1 (1986)

Richard Delgado, How to Write a Law Review Article, 20 U.S.F. L. Rev. 445 (1986)

Kevin Hopkins, Cultivating Our Emerging Voices: The Road to Scholarship, 20 B.C. Third World L.J. 77 (2000)

Mary Kay Kane, Some Thoughts on Scholarship for Beginning Teachers, 37 J. Legal Educ. 14 (1987)

Gail Levin Richmond, Advice to the Untenured, 13 Nova L. Rev. 79 (1988)

Avi Soifer, MuSings, 37 J. Legal Educ. 20 (1987)

Geoffrey R. Stone, Controversial Scholarship and Faculty Appointments: A Dean=s View, 77 Iowa L. Rev. 73 (1991)

Donald J. Weidner, A Dean=s Letter to New Law Faculty About Scholarship, 44 J. Legal. Educ. 440 (1994)

James Boyd White, Why I Write, 53 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1021 (1996)

Alfred C. Yen, Advice for the Beginning Legal Scholar, 38 Loyola L. Rev. 95 (1992)

For a more comprehensive bibliography of resources on legal scholarship, see Mary Beth Beazley and Linda H. Edwards, The Process and the Product: A Bibliography of Scholarship About Legal Scholarship, 49 Mercer L. Rev. 741 (1998).