Brooklyn Law School Professors Lead Discussions at Legal Writing Institute Biennial Conference

Professors in Brooklyn Law School’s nationally recognized legal writing program shared their scholarship, teaching, and legal writing expertise with law professors from across the country at the 2026 Legal Writing Institute Biennial Conference, which took place from July 15 to 18 at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.  

Professor Danielle Tully won the Teresa Godwin Phelps Award for Scholarship in Legal Communication for her article Behind the Curve: Rethinking Norm-Referenced Grading in First Year Legal Writing Courses. This award recognizes outstanding scholarship, including scholarly articles or essays, that strengthens the discipline of legal communication. Tully participated in a panel titled Law in Context, Law in Possibility, alongside Professors Ashley B. Armstrong (St. John’s University), Sherri Lee Keene (Georgetown), and Susan McMahon (UC Irvine). This panel discussed the contextual case method, an approach to reading judicial opinions alongside the case record, scholarship, and other sources to show how the law is made by people, rooted in its historical moment, and open to revision. 

Tully also presented her work in progress, Outsized Risks and Dubious Rewards: What We Lose When We Grade, which examines what modern legal education is for against the backdrop of accelerated timelines for summer associate recruitment and the ubiquity of free or low-cost generative-AI tools.  

Professor Maria Termini, Co-Director of Legal Research and Writing, participated in a panel discussion titled, "Writing Groups: How One Small Tweak to Your Weekly Schedule Can Help You Meet Scholarship Goals and More!" The panel discussed the benefits of meeting with a writing group, which can extend beyond scholarship to help in many facets of a professor’s work. She presented with fellow members of her own writing group, Professors Hilary Reed (University of Houston) and Kayonia L. Whetstone (George Washington). 

Professor Joy Kanwar presented on a panel titled, "Find Your Superpower: Discovering Your Legal Writing Teaching Style with the Avengers." The session included having participants take a self-assessment quiz, reflect on their strengths, and find personalized strategies to teach with authenticity. Joining Kanwar were Professors Joshua Jones (Cal Western), Oscar Fernandez (Nova Southeastern), Heather Baxter (Mercer), and Brad Desnoyer (University of Missouri-Kansas City). 

Professor Irene Ten Cate shared a work-in-progress essay titled, Legal Writing’s Identities, which probes the connection between scholarship, status, and identity in the legal writing community. Ten Cate, who completed a two-year term as Editor-in-Chief of Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, also participated in a panel featuring editors of the two peer-reviewed legal writing journals titled, "So you want to be a legal communication scholar?" She was joined by her successor, Andrele Brutus St. Val (Detroit Mercy) and two editors of Legal Communication & Rhetoric: Margaret Hannon (co-Editor-in-Chief, Michigan Law) and Kristen Murray (Managing Editor, Temple University). The panelists offered practical tips and best practices for newer legal communication scholars who seek to join ongoing scholarly conversations and participate in discipline-building.  

Ten Cate and Termini, who started a two-year term as Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Legal Writing, also prepared a poster presentation for the journal and hosted a gathering for authors, editors, and conference participants who want to publish legal writing scholarship. 

Professor Alissa Bauer presented a poster titled, "What is Rule Support?," which provides concrete guidance (including a formula) for how to teach the rule support section of the IRAC paradigm, sometimes called case illustrations, rule explanations, rule proof, or a variety of other terms. This visual depiction of how to craft the rule support section builds on Bauer’s recent empirical analysis of the 15 most popular first-year legal writing textbooks and the varied ways that they address the rule support section. Her recent article, Teaching Cases: How Legal Writing Textbooks Approach the Rule Support Section (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5242169), explores these findings.