the (new) legal writer

Bryan Garner’s summer tour

If you're looking for some summertime CLE, check out Bryan Garner’s summer schedule. He’s offering three programs in one day: The Winning Brief, Making Your Case, and The Garner Method for Better Legal Memos. Bryan’s seminars are both entertaining and educational, so if you have the chance to attend, do. Here are the stops on Bryan’s tour:

• Seattle — June 4
• Kan. City, Mo. — June 11
• Atlanta — June 14
• Nashville — June 18
• San Francisco — June 21
• Wash., D.C. — June 25
• New York — June 26
• Los Angeles — June 29
• New Orleans — July 12
• Dallas — August 7

Great seminar for appellate lawyers

If you’re looking for first-rate appellate CLE, I’ve got the seminar for you: the DRI Appellate Advocacy Seminar, to be held in Cambridge, MA on June 21–22, 2012. I’ve attended all the prior DRI appellate seminars except one, and based on my personal experience, I can promise you that the program will be excellent and the company most congenial. For more information about the seminar, download the brochure (PDF) or the press release (Word). You can also visit the seminar web page, where you will find more information about the seminar and can register on line.

For appellate lawyers, a great seminar

I have attended every DRI Appellate Advocacy Seminar since the first one in 1999. So I confidently recommend the next one, to be held March 10-11, 2011 in Orlando, Florida. The faculty includes several appellate judges, in-house counsel, and top-notch appellate lawyers from across the country. So the educational value is outstanding. Perhaps even more enjoyable for appellate lawyers is the opportunity to meet and get to know their peers from across the country—a most congenial group! To learn more about the program, download the flyer, or register, visit the DRI web site.

Bryan Garner coming to your town (maybe)

During the next three months, Bryan Garner will be on tour with a double-feature CLE program: Advanced Legal Writing & Editing in the morning, and Making Your Case (developed with Justice Antonin Scalia) in the afternoon. You can sign up for one or the other, or for both. A link to the flyer is here. And here is a list of the stops on Bryan’s tour:

• Feb. 1: Little Rock
• Feb. 2: Kansas City
• Feb. 14: Nashville
• Feb. 21: Miami
• Mar. 3: Dallas
• Mar. 7: Austin
• Mar. 8: Houston
• Mar. 16: Phoenix
• Mar. 25: New Orleans
• Apr. 11: Chicago
• Apr. 20: Cleveland
• Apr. 26: Minneapolis
• May 5: Washington, DC
• May 9: Philadelphia
• May 12: Boston
• May 17: New York

For Bridging the Gap participants and anyone else who’s interested

This afternoon, I’m presenting the appellate-practice hour of the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Bridging the Gap seminar for newly minted lawyers. For those participants and others who may be interested:

• my written materials
• a PDF copy of my PowerPoint presentationA PDF copy of my PowerPoint presentation
• A Writ in Time (my article on how to calculate the deadline to apply to a court of appeal for a supervisory writ).

Participants may also be interested in these two articles by Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit:

• In Praise of Moot Court — Not!, in which Judge Kozinski discusses the differences between law-school moot-court programs and real-world appellate practice.
• The Wrong Stuff, in which Judge Kozinski explains how to lose an appeal that, for whatever reason, you must lose.

Finally, here are some sample pleadings and briefs. Treat them only as samples, not as models. Use them with caution, as the rules may have changed since these were written.

• Sample notice of intent to seek supervisory writ
• Sample supervisory-writ application
• Sample motion and order for devolutive appeal
• Sample motion and order for suspensive appeal
  
• Sample brief filed in court of appeal
• Sample writ application filed in La. Supreme Court
• Sample merits brief filed in La. Supreme Court
  

Two Bryan Garner seminars in one day

Bryan Garner is hitting the road, giving two seminars at each stop: a 3½-hour version of Advanced Legal Writing and Editing in the morning, and a 3-hour presentation of Making Your Case, based on the book he wrote with Justice Antonin Scalia. You can register for one or the other, or for both. Here’s the schedule:

• Sept. 13 — New York, NY
• Sept. 27 — Atlanta, GA
• Sept. 28 — Jackson, MS
• Oct. 7 — San Diego, CA
• Oct. 8 — Los Angeles, CA
• Oct. 11 — Phoenix, AZ
• Oct. 13 — Portland, OR
• Oct. 14 — Seattle, WA
• Nov. 4 — San Francisco, CA
• Nov. 5 — Sacramento, CA
• Nov. 8 — Washington, DC
• Nov. 16 — New Orleans, LA

My presentation at the LWI Conference

Today I’m giving a presentation at the Legal Writing Institute’s 14th Biennial Conference. My topic is techniques for emphasizing favorable material and (sometimes more important) de-emphasizing unfavorable material. For attendees and other interested persons, here are copies of  the one-page handout and  the article that the presentation is based on.

For LWI conference attendees: Where I'll be

If you happen to be attending the Legal Writing Institute's 14th Biennial Conference, think about catching my presentation on Wednesday, June 30, from 2:30 to 3:15 p.m. It will be a practitioner-oriented session on how to emphasize good material and de-emphasize bad material.

Bryan Garner hits the road with “The Winning Brief”

If you live around one of the cities listed below, then you may want to sign up for Bryan Garner’s excellent CLE seminar “The Winning Brief.” I’ve attended this seminar twice: once a long time ago, when Bryan used an overhead projector to give his presentation; and again more recently, when he used PowerPoint with embedded videos. If you’ve never taken this seminar before, or if you last took it in the overhead-projector era, I promise you that you’ll get your money’s worth. For more information and for links to on-line registration, click here.

• Houston: June 8
• Denver: June 18
• Chicago: June 22
• Minneapolis: June 23
• Atlanta: June 28
• Miami: June 29
• Phoenix: July 6
• Los Angeles: July 8
• San Francisco: July 9
• New York: July 12
• Washington, D.C.: July 13
• Boston: July 14
• Dallas: July 20

I’ll be there; I’ll be there; I will be there (presenting)

If you don’t mind a little sun, sand, and sea with your professional development, then please consider the Legal Writing Institute’s 14th Biennial Conference, to be held at the Marco Island Marriott Beach Resort in south Florida (Gulf side) June 27–30. Although the conference is mainly for legal-writing teachers, there are also several items on the menu for practitioners. Among those will be my own presentation, scheduled for Wednesday, June 30, on how to emphasize without doing THIS or this!!!, and how to de-emphasize without hiding stuff in footnotes or omitting it altogether.