Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [155]
You are given a task that your assignment should accomplish. It might, for instance, be “Express and defend your views on whether alcohol manufacturers should be held strictly liable in tort for crimes committed by people who have gotten drunk on the manufacturer's product,” or “Analyze and critique the recent Doe v. Roe case.” This is different from a real student Note, where you choose your own topic.
You are given a prepared set of research materials. You are generally not allowed to cite any authority that is not part of those materials. (Some competitions may give you a set of materials but not give you a specific question. In those competitions, you would have to come up with an interesting issue to write about, but of course one that's raised by what the materials cover.)
You are given a length limit and a time limit: For instance, over Spring vacation (say, from Friday evening before Spring vacation to Monday morning after it), you must produce at most 10 pages of text and 15 pages of endnotes, with particular margins and in a particular font.
You are given detailed instructions, which tell you all about the required formatting, structure, and so on. Follow them to the letter, no matter what anyone (including this book) tells you.
Finally, you may be required to do a proofreading, bluebooking, or editing assignment—a few pages that are separate from the main assignment, and that contain dozens of intentionally planted errors. You must find those errors and properly correct them, generally using the particular proofreading symbols that you'll be instructed to use. Again, use those symbols exactly as you're given them, and follow the rules of English and of the Bluebook (or whatever citation manual you're assigned) to the smallest detail.
Your job is to write the best-written, best-reasoned, best-proofread, and best-bluebooked Note that you can; to proofread and bluebook the editing assignment as well as you can; and to scrupulously follow all the rules you are given.
G. Begin Before the Competition Starts
You should start preparing for the competition weeks before it starts. Yes, it's extra work, at a time when you're already swamped with work. But just as an athlete needs to prepare well before the competition, so do you. The write-on competition will require specialized bluebooking and writing knowledge that you probably haven't fully learned. Use the time before you compete to acquire that knowledge.
1. Do background reading
In the several weeks or even months before the competition:
a. Ask your law review which citation style manual it uses, and whether it has any supplemental instructions explaining how its style deviates from the standard manual.
b. Ask your law review which writing style manual it uses.
c. Read the citation style manual several times.
d. Read the writing style manual several times.
e. Read a good general writing manual, such as Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, at least once.
f. Read the Editing and Writing chapters of this book (Parts IX through XVI) at least once.
Citation manuals tell you how cases, statutes, law review articles, and other materials should be cited. Writing style manuals tell you how to resolve contestable writing issues—for instance, when to put a hyphen after the prefix “non,” or whether to start sentences with conjunctions. Much of the editing assignment, if there is one, will require you to know the citation manual very well. Even if there is no editing assignment, you'll be expected to use the proper citation form in your own citations, and to follow the writing style manual in your text.
Most law reviews use a citation style manual called the Bluebook; for convenience, I will talk about “the Bluebook” and “bluebooking” throughout this section, meaning “whatever citation style manual your law review uses.” Many law reviews use the Texas Manual of Style as their writing style manual.
2. Especially focus on the Bluebook
Once