Learning to write in an appropriate register is one of the more challenging tasks for law students in general and for International students in particular. In this presentation, we will discuss how we have traditionally taught register to our students and how we propose to use AI to facilitate and enhance that process.
Mimi Samuel, Director, Legal Writing Program and Associate Professor of Lawyering Skills, Seattle University School of Law
After law school, Professor Samuel practiced business litigation for approximately eight years, first in Washington, D.C., at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, and then in San Francisco, at Thelen Marin Johnson & Bridges.
For almost two decades, Professor Samuel has worked with law students, lawyers, and judges overseas to help them improve their legal writing. In addition, she has consulted with law schools in a number of countries both on how to develop their legal writing curricula and how best to teach students to become effective writers. In 2011, she was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Scholarship to develop and implement the first legal writing class on Sri Lanka at the University of Peradeniya. In addition, she has worked Afghanistan, Botswana, China, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Liberia, Russia, South Africa, and Uganda. Professor Samuel has won two awards for her work overseas: In 2016, she was awarded a Global Legal Skills Award for promoting global legal skills around the world and the Terri LeClercq Courage Award, which is awarded by the Legal Writing Institute “to honor individuals who have demonstrated ‘courage writ large’ concerning legal writing and, in particular, Those LWI members who have demonstrated courage by doing, despite fear, something that most people would not do.” In addition, in 2008, Professor Samuel was awarded the first Bronson Dillehay Award for her article Focus on Batson: Let the Cameras Roll. That award is given by the American Society of Trial Consultants for a proposal for addressing a significant and persistent problem that undermines both the right to a fair trial and public confidence in the legal system.
John Thornton, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John Thornton is a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Professor Thornton specialized in complex commercial litigation, practicing law at Jenner & Block LLP; Vedder, Price, Kaufman & Kammholz, PC; and at a Chicago litigation boutique. He received a BA from Notre Dame, a Masters in Applied Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he taught English as a Second Language, and a JD from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Professor Thornton’s book, U.S. Legal Reasoning, Writing, and Practice for International Lawyers (LexisNexis 2014, now Carolina Academic Press), won the Global Legal Skills Award in 2015, and he is the Chair of the AALS Section on Graduate Programs for Non-US Lawyers.
