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Cyberspace Law Seminar, Spring 2008

Writing Assignments

This Web page deals with the seminar research papers process. Over time this "page" has evolved into something that is really more in the nature of a "manual." It is recommended that you look through it with some care at the beginning of the seminar, so that you are sure to have at least some sense of the subjects covered here, and then refer back to it as the semester progresses and portions of it become directly applicable to the then-current phase of your writing. The "Contents" section, below, has been created to enable you to navigate within this document by clicking on the headings and subheadings. (Just use the "Back" feature on your Web browser to take you back to the Contents.)

Hopefully, once you have read and applied what is here there will be no occasion for me to have to refer you back to this material when editing your "outline" or "first final draft." In the event I do, however, "page numbers" have now been inserted in this text. Thus, rather than repeat a paragraph of commentary that is already written here, the note on your draft will simply refer you to the relevant "page." Each page will be identified in brackets as, e.g., [P20]. This will enable you to use the "Edit/Find" feature of your browser to search within this text for the material following, in our example, [P20]. (In other words, you will not need to print out the document to identify pages, which might not agree with your formatting anyway. You can simply search for the page designations online. In some instances, I may add an additional shorthand reference to something on that page. In the example provided, page 20, "[P20]-GE" might be a reference to "Grammatical errors," or "[P20]-Phrasing" a reference to "Phrasing that is ambiguous." Often it will be obvious, by comparing your text to the page reference I note, what it is I am trying to point out to you.

– Nicholas Johnson, December 5, 2007

This material is intended to be read at the beginning of the semester and then referred to throughout the seminar as it becomes specifically applicable.

Because we have many steps to go through and a limited time in which to execute them some timelines and agreements are necessary on the front end. Among my reasons for doing this are at least three that benefit you:

(1) To reduce your obligations, at least so far as this seminar is concerned, during the last week of the semester, thereby giving you more time to study for finals, or finish up other assignments.

(2) To give you every opportunity to do your very best work on a paper that will be posted on the Web for all to see.

(3) I believe you will find it useful throughout your professional career to have developed the time management and project management skills necessary for projects that can only be completed, on time and with a quality product, if they are broken down into "milepost" achievements, and tracked with something akin to Gantt or PERT chart techniques. That's certainly true of long-term, mamouth litigation projects extending over years. But it's also useful for less complex projects as well. In any event, the approach outlined here involves a sort of baby steps example of that.

[P3]

latest how many academic and writing credits you think you will get. You begin the semester with my assumption (the default position) that you are registered for one writing credit only (i.e., two academic credits for the seminar, plus one additional academic credit for the research paper, plus one writing credit for the paper).

Deadlines, will be rigorously enforced (that is, failure to meet them will carry points-off penalties and create the risk of your being dropped from the seminar). Moreover, rather than have just one, it is useful for both you and me to have a number of "mileposts" (as we say in "GANTT" and "PERT" chart project management language). The mileposts listed in the "Writing Timeline Mileposts" page are my proposals for now. I am willing to modify the dates – if everyone is unanimous as to those changes and the agreement is reached sufficiently prior to the milepost in question.

After getting the administrative details out of the way (and see, in this connection, "Participants Responsibilities"), the next step is to pick a topic. Here are some suggestions regarding how to go about that.

• Topics

The first milepost is your selection of a topic. This is, in many ways, the most difficult and important stage of writing. It is the foundation upon which your entire research process, and ultimate paper, will rest. Once a construction project starts going up on shifting sand there's very little the carpenters can do to create a solid structure. (Or, as the old line has it, "If you don't know where you're going the odds are great you'll never get there.")

Ask yourself questions like: What is it you are going to be researching and writing about and why? Who is your intended audience? What is it you are trying to accomplish with your paper – argue a position, advise, change current practice, encourage new legislation?

Before you can even begin to think about selecting a topic you will need to do some surveying, and reading -- what I call "pre-research." What's hot these days? What interests you? What are your options out there?

A topic is not something you can pluck out of the air the last minute before it is due. A successful topic is one that results from a lot of research, exploration of the Internet and other literature, possibly even interviewing -- and, most important, thought. You may select and research, revise, and then reject, as many as a dozen before settling on, and refining your description of, the one you ultimately choose. The more time you put in on it now the better will be your ultimate choice, the more efficient your research and writing, and the more fun and benefit you and your readers will get from the paper and the seminar.

In fact, picking your topic is probably the single most important part of the seminar's writing assignment.

It is in any event your choice and your responsibility. I deliberately do not have a list from which you pick. (1) Bringing yourself up to speed on the issues created by the intersection of law and Internet, on your own, is the most effective way for you to develop the sense of excitement, and understanding, of what is going on out there. (2) Unless you have a measure of genuine curiosity, and enthusiasm, about what you are researching and writing there is less likelihood that the final product will be of top quality – or that you'll have much fun or sense of satisfaction in doing it.

Of course, I have been, and will continue to be, available to help you think through the selection of categories, possible topics, and how to narrow them appropriately. Conferences at this stage are not required, but always possible. Almost always in my experience the process of our sufficiently narrowing and agreeing on a topic takes more than a single one-on-one office conference or e-mail exchange.

A conference, or substantive e-mail exchange, is required prior to my approval of your selected topic -- an approval that is also required before you proceed. You are not my research assistant; I will not be proposing, and you will not be responding to, topics that are of interest to me but not to you. This is to be your topic, and paper. My role is simply to provide you guidance designed to save you from future frustration in having taken on too much, or having selected a topic that provides very little opportunity for you to show your legal skills.

• Definitions

 

 
 
 

I've already used a lot of words like "topic" and "narrowing." How am I using them?
 

• A "category" might be, for example, something like "privacy on the Internet." Within the category of "privacy" might be . . .
• "Sub-categories" associated with privacy. They might include, say, information exchanged during the course of sales over the Internet (“e-commerce”).
• Focusing on sales involving credit cards – or, even, specifically VISA – might further narrow those sub-categories.
• And a sub-category might be narrowed even more by specifying a particular piece of information that is collected during these transactions, or a particular system for recording (and possibly selling) that information, or a sub-section of some statute/regulation involving such transactions.
• Your "topic" differs from such a sub-category by virtue of its action component, the position you are taking, what you are advocating. By topic I mean your proposal, argument, hypothesis -- something that goes beyond mere description. Examples of illustrative templates might include: "The x Step During y Transactions Would be Less Costly if z Were Done." "State x Legislation Should be [Repealed OR Revised OR Enacted] Because Current Law Has [or Has Not] Provided the Result y in the z Transactions." "The Supreme Court's Misapplication of the x Doctrine in the y Case is Creating Widespread z."
• And don't forget, in drafting your topic, the advice in the section below regarding the fact that you need a topic that will enable you to dmonstrate your legal as well as your writing abilities.
• The "topic" is something you should be able to express in a single sentence. You may (or may not) want to e-mail me a few paragraphs of explanation as to why you chose what you did, the categories you explored and your efforts to narrow them. But such discussion is not a "topic."
• The "title" of your paper is another matter. It can be long, or short; cute or straight forward. But it should provide some clue to the reader as to what you're writing about and what it is you are arguing, or proposing, about that general area. In short, it should be consistent with your topic, but it is not the same as your topic.

Suggestions

• Pick a topic within a category that involves an area of law, or law school course, with which you are already familiar. For example, if you have not had a course or experience with antitrust law you are putting an enormous burden on yourself in this seminar if you are – necessarily and simultaneously – trying to master antitrust law, about which you know nothing, in addition to trying to learn your area of “cyberspace law.”  Obviously, you are not forbidden to do this; some students can do it, and do it well; just know what you’re getting in for before you do it.
• The reasons to narrow your topic are not only (1) to simplify and focus your task ("work smarter, not harder"), but also (2) to increase the likelihood that you will end up producing a Web-published paper that will make a genuine contribution to the body of legal literature. (3) Not incidentally, of course, this also reflects more favorably on you when others read it. (4) The topic should be sufficiently narrow that you end up as, if not the only, at least one of a very small handful of lawyers who know more about your subject than anyone else on Earth.
• What is a "cyberlaw topic"? Not every legal issue involving a computer is necessarily the basis for a good cyberlaw topic and research paper.
 
If a computer repair person's vehicle is involved in an accident it doesn't turn that tort case into cyberlaw. A defamatory statement written on a computer keyboard, printed out, and posted on an office bulletin board does not thereby become defamation in cyberspace. There are all kinds of cases involving contracts, jurisdiction, antitrust, copyright and trademark infringement in which computers, or the Internet, are in some way involved and yet raise no issues distinguishing the cases from more conventional conflicts.

To the maximum extent possible you want to look for issues involving the intersection, or interweaving, of computer/Internet technology, on the one hand, and a challenge to pre-cyberlaw law on the other.

This does not mean that the categories above are precluded; it depends on the issue. To use the defamation example, there's nothing cyberlaw about using a computer, instead of an electric typewriter or ballpoint pen, to write a defamatory statement. But there's everything cyberlaw about uploading a defamatory statement to a Web page, or posting it in a chat room, and then trying to figure out the plaintiff's "community" for purposes of that element of defamation law. Similarly, the application of trademark law to the invisible metatags on a Web page, or the copyright analysis when "deep linking" is involved, require an anlysis not contemplated by the drafters of the original law.


Basic Research Sources and Techniques for Topic Exploration

How do you come up with a topic, or "do research"? The following suggestions, while obvious, may be worth a quick review. Remember that the "research" phase of your paper begins with your thinking about potential topics and continues throughout the final tweaking of your "final, final" draft.

• use the Internet, search engines, the resources and bookmarks linked from my Web page (www.nicholasjohnson.org)
• look at the site that links to prior CLS participants' papers (you can't use the topics, but they may be suggestive)
• ask a reference librarian
• look in an encyclopedia
• look for conventional books on the subject
• look for books in the computer section of bookstores
• check computer specialty and trade magazines, the business press, and quality newspapers
• check out past issues of Edupage
• use online legal search services (e.g., Lexis, Westlaw)
• see if there are law review articles
• the discussion (in addition to the holdings) in court opinions may be useful

Caveat: You are writing a law school paper
 
Most professional or academic papers contain some general description that any non-professional could read and understand and many could have written. Portions of your paper may, likewise, read like a good newspaper feature story or an article in the Atlantic magazine. To some degree that's necessary.

But in order to satisfy the academic requirements for graduate level, law school seminar research and writing the more your paper reflects your ability in exercizing legal skills the better.

By legal skills I mean pulling a holding from a case, synthesizing a number of holdings into a rule of law, interpreting a statute, drafting legal provisions in legislation or contracts, the creative and persuasive building of a legal argument, or law review-like doctrinal analyses.

In part, this requirement is satisfied by the research and writing that you will do later in the semester. The reason it is mentioned now is that the framing of your topic can aid, or hinder, your ability to write a legal paper.

In short, if you merely (a) describe a problem or issue (such as "spam," or "pornography on the Internet"), and (b) describe currently pending, or proposed, legislation addressing the problem, you have neither put forward a thesis, or topic (as I am using those words), nor have you demonstrated your legal skills.

To pursue those illustrations: There's nothing wrong with spam or pornography as categories. Nor is there anything wrong with legislation as a way to demonstrate your legal skills. It's just that the paper needs to be more than merely descriptive. You could, for instance, do a critique of a court's decision, comparing its analysis with its prior decisions. You could propose a new legislative approach of your own, identify the potential constitutional or other legal objections to your law, and then address them in turn, demonstrating why your approach would be constitutional and otherwise legal, or where the analogies for your approach might be found in other legislation or court opinions.

What do you do if there is no "law" directly on point?

What do lawyers always do when there is no law directly on point? They look for analogies.

For example, suppose you want to explore the professional ethics issues involved in using a Web page to market your legal services or otherwise practice law. Let's assume you look for, but cannot find, anything directly on point regarding, say, the ethical issues that might arise from the fact that such a proposal would involve "practicing law" in jurisdictions other than those in which the Web page lawyer is licensed to practice. (That is, your Web page offer of services could be seen anywhere on Planet Earth where someone had access to the Internet.) What do you do? Perhaps you can find something involving the practice of law by way of telephone or fax communication with clients in states in which a lawyer is not licensed to practice.

Additional Suggestions

(a) Teach yourself, and apply, perfect Blue Book form from the get-go. Once you find a source you know you will want to use, get the cite, and get it right, the very first time. Don't say, "Oh, I'll do that later." Best case, doing a "cite check" later is a duplication and waste of time. Worst case, you may not be able to find it later. If it's not second nature for you already, you'll be pleasantly surprised how quickly you'll master all but the most arcane Blue Book citation requirements. Correct citation form not only serves a real purpose (enabling others to find your sources) but also provides judges and fellow lawyers with the illusion that what you are saying about the substantive law reflects an equivalent compulsive attention to accuracy.

(b) You are, of course, not forbidden to use hard copy, Westlaw or Lexis cites. But there are a number of reasons to at least begin with a thorough search for material available on the Internet.

(1) It's a wonderful resource; among its billions of documents may well be material not otherwise available.

(2) That's where your paper will be published. That's where your readers will be.

(3) You can "incorporate by reference" enormous bodies of material with a simple link; your cites become sites, enabling the reader not only to have a reference to your source, but to instantaneously get access to the full text of the source material itself.

(4) Besides, knowing how to use the Internet for all it's worth is as important to a lawyer today as knowing Westlaw and Lexis 20 years ago, or the West Key Number system 20 years before that.

(5) This is an opportunity to get academic credit for something you'll need to teach yourself anyway.

(c) What I will be looking for in grading your paper is also something to keep in mind when selecting a topic. It will include such things as: demonstration of legal skills in analysis; quantity and quality of research; breadth of sources (e.g., court opinions, statutory material, law review articles); innovation and imagination in the selection of analogies; creativity and innovation in the selection of a topic, proposals and content; quality of writing; and use of correct citation form.

The following basics are provided, full well knowing that they will produce reactions from some readers along a continuum between uproarious laughter at one end and resentment at being insulted at the other. "Don't you know everybody is born knowing this stuff?" they cry.

So why is it here? Because, in my experience, everybody is not born knowing this stuff. Indeed, over a half of most seminar participants overlook one, more, or all of the following requirements, requests and suggestions.

Whether you're writing a brief for the Supreme Court of the United States, a memo to a senior partner or client, a "memo to the file," a record of an expenditure, even an entry in your personal journal -- or the topic statements, outlines, and drafts for this seminar -- it's useful to keep the following in mind when identifying your document.

The form you chose to use, even where you put the information (e.g., beginning or end, top or bottom of page, left margin or centered), is not as crucial as that it be present somewhere within your document (unless the court, or your law firm, has a style manual you are to follow; I do not). Provide the information in the way that you find the most aesthetically pleasing and least awkward.

This is not only important when providing a document to others, it's equally or more important when it will only be seen by you. At the time you are preparing a document you know what it is. Presumably it's fairly important to you. Assuming you only have two or three things you're working on at the same time it's relatively easy to distinguish among them. However, when you're working with hundreds of matters at various stages of completion, or come upon a given document weeks or years later, you may not know what it is, or how it's distinguished from others.

For the person receiving your document, such problems are only multiplied. Such persons not only have all your unidentified documents, they have all the unidentified documents of numerous others.

Find out how your judge, senior partner (or, now, professor) likes documents prepared. I once clerked for a federal judge who insisted all stapled documents have the staple in the upper left corner at a 45 degree angle. (Actually it's kind of sensible; the pages are less likely to tear on the staple.) But the point of this section does not involve stapling; the judge died some years ago and frankly I don't care how you staple. The point is that there may be some special request that – if you know about it ahead of time – is easy to satisfy. So why not?

Is this merely an obsessive-compulsive attention to detail? That's how it's seen by the many persons who not only resist, but actually resent, having to comply. But it turns out that one of the requirements of professionalism in every profession is precisely that kind of compulsive attention to detail. And law school is, at least in some part, designed to assist students in the development of such habits of mind and work. Hopefully, these explanations why such details are important may make it easier to attend to them.

[P12]

Date. When was this document prepared? (1) You may want to file, and subsequently find, documents chronologically. (2) If other identifying information was omitted, the date may help you recreate it later. (3) It may constitute, if not proof, at least some evidence that a deadline was met. (4) It will, of course, help the recipient of your document even more in these ways.

Subject identification. What is this document? (1) The title. The name of your short story -- or, in this case, the "working title" of your seminar paper. (2) The category. Is it a brief, a pleading, an opinion letter? For this seminar, is it a topic statement, an outline, a first final, or final final draft?

Recipient and purpose. For what stage of what court proceeding -- or what assignment for what course and professor -- was this prepared?

Author/s. You know that you wrote the document you hold in your hand. The recipient may not know. You may not know years from now. Put your name, or at least your initials, on everything you write. If there are multiple authors, or other contacts relative to the document, you might want to include (or at least attach to your own copy if it's inappropriate to put it in the main text) the names and coordinates of those whom you may need or want to contact later with regard to this item. They might include clients, lawyers, phone numbers of court clerks, or whatever.

Draft number. Most good writing goes through at least a half dozen or more rewrites. (1) As you've probably already discovered, it's useful to save and backup each draft as you go through this process -- if for no other reason than when the inevitable computer crash occurs you're not starting over from scratch. (2) Having numbered drafts, when you come upon a hard copy of one, you no longer need to wonder if it's the latest one, the one you're currently working on, or not. (3) This may be especially helpful for the recipient, to know whether what they're reading has already been mailed, or published, or whether it's been given to them for comments and editing -- and, if so, whether it's a draft they've already seen or a later one.

Page numbers. Whether you start numbering from page one, or only from the second page, number your pages. (1) Especially if it is a substantial document of loose pages, if it's dropped, or the pages are otherwise mixed up, putting them back in order can be a bit frustrating. (Of course, this might also be a reason for considering a staple!) (2) Sometimes you will have inadvertently omitted pages from the document. Having them numbered makes it easier for you, and the recipient, to figure that out. (3) You may sometimes want to use a running header or footer -- that is, a group of words at the top or bottom of the page that may, for example, include your name and other brief information about the document along with the page number.

Label CDs or other storage media. If you submit (or save for your own use) a document on a CD, put a label on it. The label need not be designed for the purpose, or neatly printed. But it should contain at least your name and date and maybe a summary version of the document's title and other information listed above. The reasons for doing so, of course, are for the most part identical to those for hard copy documents -- maybe more so; you can at least figure out something by staring at a hard copy document; blank storage media are much less revealing of their contents.

File names. Try to make file names somewhat unique. For example, if one or more students submit electronic copies of documents with filenames such as "outline.doc," and they are copied by the recipient into a single directory, they may actually over-write each other. At a minimum, it will be somewhere between impossible and very difficult to figure out, without opening the files, which is whose. Consider, for example, using something like "CLSABout.doc" to represent (a) Cyberspace Law Seminar, (b) from Able Baker, who is submitting his (c) outline. Obviously, as always, the precise form is not as important -- either for you or the recipient -- as that you provide filenames with at least some tie to you and the nature of the document.

The three most important rules when writing on computers: Backup, backup, and backup. Last time I checked blank CDs were cheap. Buy some. Use them. The only sure thing we know about every hard drive ever manufactured is that it will, someday, crash. Your time may not, yet, be worth $100-300 an hour. But it is clearly worth 20 cents. Moreover, if you "save" with separate names every draft of every document as you progress you will avoid wiping out material you later wish you had.

And don't limit yourself to one backup – especially if you carry backup media around with your laptop, or keep it near your desktop. If your computer is lost, stolen or involved in a fire you'll lose your only backup as well as your computer and its hard drive. For any document of financial value, or that has involved a lot of work on your part, it's wise to keep a second backup in another location. Needless to say, none of these computer suggestions are a "requirement" of the seminar. It's just friendly advice designed to avoid, in the computer age, what in my day was the excuse, "The dog ate my homework."

If you go about the outlining task correctly you should have most of your research and organization (to a somewhat detailed level – what I have called a "three-level outline" -- see "Style/Format" below) done by the time your outline is finished. A paper almost writes itself once you have a detailed outline. There's always more research to do, and the writing will take time and polishing. But you will have broken the back of the project and be well on your way to the fun part, and finishing it.

If you haven't written a lot of research papers during your undergraduate and law school career, or would just like to brush up on techniques, including outlining, here are some possible sources.

[P15]

• Bradley Bennett, a student in the Cyberspace Law Seminar in 2002, has agreed to have his outline available for others to look at as an actual, real life example. Neither he nor I represent that it is anything in the nature of a "model" outline. It is, however, a good example of many of the features an outline should contain. Moreover, because it is student work -- rather than professorial preaching -- you may find it more persuasive and student-friendly.

• Someone at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University has written "A Guide to Good Legal Writing: An Introduction to the Writing Process."  It is, in some ways, the first thing you should look at before beginning this project. But it is also relevant, now, with regard to your outlining.

• For a one-screen/page look at a "three-level outline," see "Basic Outlining," from the CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

• Professor Pam Samuelson, skilled in many aspects of the law, has written a helpful piece in the 1984 University of Pittsburgh Law Review entitled, "Good Legal Writing: Of Orwell and Window Panes," which has some reference to outlining but is primarily recommended for its overall view of legal writing tips useful to you in this assignment. (For example, her discussion of the first of "Six Paramount Rules of Good Legal Writing" ("Have a Point") is of special relevance to your selection, refinement and narrowing of your "topic.")

• Equally useful as a general approach to legal writing is Eugene Volokh's "Writing a Student Article," and in this context the section of it entitled "Organizing the Article."

There are a number of things that many prior students' outlines have caused me to comment about in the past. What follows is not an exhaustive list, but is enough to give you a heads up as to ways you can improve your outline before you hand it in and we talk about it.

Titles and Theses. Sometimes as many as a half of the outlines submitted come with no “title,” “topic,” statement of “thesis,” or “purpose.” (Of course, not all are necessary, but you should have at least one of them.) Sometimes this is merely an oversight. More often, in my experience, it reveals a lack of focus or purpose on the part of the writer. (I'm always reminded, in this context, of the title of my college freshman English textbook: McCrimmon's Writing With a Purpose.)

Length. Outlines are not graded – to use the old law professor’s story regarding exam blue books –  by throwing them down a flight of stairs to see which ones go the furthest. On the other hand, the purpose of these outlines is for you to have done almost all of your research and analysis. At a minimum, you should have enough analysis, organization, content and references to make the actual writing more a matter of “fill in the blanks” than starting from scratch. Those who produce outlines in the 5-9 page range (or more) are almost always in better shape in this regard than those with 1-3 page outlines. Remember that the outlining process is designed to save you time and effort over the course of the project, rather than the reverse.

Headings and Subheads. Words like “Introduction,” “Body,” and “Conclusion,” while possibly appropriate to a templates for outlines generally, communicate very little to the reader (or, in this case, the writer) when used in an outline for a specific paper. Everything above regarding “topics” is equally applicable to the drafting of headings and subheads.

Only slightly better are headings that point to an area or category, but not to the reasons for their existence in the paper, or the point that they are there to make. Examples would be headings such as “background,” “history,” or “ethical considerations.” What is it about the history, or ethics, that makes this section of the paper relevant to your thesis? Such headings may (though not always) indicate that your paper is a little heavy on  descriptions (i.e., what I call “journalism”) and a little light on the legal analysis.

Research. Some outlines provide very little – in textual references, endnotes, or bibliographies –  to indicate the research that has been done (e.g., case names, law review articles, or other sources). As indicated before, most of your research should have been done during the months of January and February and be reflected in this outline.

Style/Format. It’s no big deal; whatever works for you is fine. But just so you know, the standard progression in an outline is from Roman (i.e., I, II, III, etc.) to caps (i.e., A, B, C, etc.), to Arabic (i.e., 1, 2, 3, etc.), to small (i.e., a, b, c, etc.). Incidentally, in this connection, what I mean by a "three level" outline is one that goes at least to the level of, e.g., I., A. and 1.

To repeat, for your sake (in saving your time, and improving the quality of your work) your outline should be, in effect, sufficiently developed that you could (almost), sit down and write your paper without the need to rely on any other notes. That is, every theory, idea, supporting argument, illustrative example, or major case should (1) be represented in some way in the outline, and (2) be located within it in such a way as to show its best possible relationship to what comes before and after.

Outlines are both required and strongly recommended. If an individual participant has an insurmountable psychological block regarding pre-writing outlining, however, it may be possible in some instances to substitute a detailed first draft for an outline with the prior permission of the instructor.

Clearly, the most important thing about your paper is the appropriateness of the subject you have chosen, the substantive contribution it can make, and the quality of your research, organization, analysis and presentation of that subject. For the most part, these aspects will have been addressed in the creation, and review, of your outline.

I will do a fairly detailed edit of something between a quarter and a half of the first final draft of your paper – depending on its length.

As I often say, when you graduate from law school you don't get a tractor or a set of dental implements. All you take with you into your practice of law are your verbal skills: your ability to listen, speak, read and write. These are the abilities that will contribute to your success – and therefore that of your clients – more than anything else. Obviously, if your verbal skills are not substantially better than theirs they have little reason to seek, let alone pay for, your services.

[P18]

Ironically, the handicap suffered by most if not all law students is your very brilliance and facility – when compared with that of your classmates in high school and college. You were so darn good that you could dash off a paper the night before it was due, hand it in virtually unread, let alone proof read, and get it back with an "A" on it (and no suggestions for revision). Ego-boosting at the time, this treatment did you a real disservice.

Professional writing – like professional anything, such as football or performance of music – requires seemingly unlimited hours of practice and rehearsal. A professional musician who has written the music she is going to perform, and who has performed it in concert dozens of times, may play it over a hundred times or more before the next concert. An actor will "run lines," and attend rehearsals, to perform, and perform again, roles she has played many times before. A football player does not just execute a block once and get a grade on it from the coach. He will do it over, and over, and over again until he can do it with perfection each time.

Do you know where Tiger Woods can be found after a championship round of golf? He's not drinking in the clubhouse. He's out on the practice range, hitting more balls, further perfecting his swing.

So it is with writing from now on for you.

No longer is it something you do once. Or twice. It's something you do over and over again, just like every other professional has to do with his or her skills.

I want you to experience, to practice, the skills of rewriting and proof reading. I want you to be able to write, and to edit, to the exacting standards of the highest quality law firms in America.

In my paper, "So You Want to be a Lawyer: A Play in Four Acts," I repeat the identical stories told me by two of my most brilliant and conscientious colleagues, members of our law school faculty. Each had the experience in two different law firms, firms ranked among our nation's finest, of having their written work rejected by a senior partner. Because of a single typo on the first page of a memo the partner literally threw it back across the desk at them. The standard was perfection and they hadn't met it.

I want you to be able to meet that standard. I don't want you to have your work thrown back at you – or worse – because of your inability to write to the standards of professionals.

And I want you to demonstrate your ability to do that with your paper in this seminar.

[P19]

What You Are to Do With What I Give Back to You. The point of my editing your first final draft is not to say that you have "failed," or "done a lousy job." Nor is it to say that the changes I have made are the "right" way to express what you are trying to say and that the way you've done it is the "wrong" way. Indeed, if you just copy my edits verbatim that's probably points off. Were I to read over and edit each of your papers again I most certainly would reject some of my own first edits.

In no event am I imposing any "rules" of writing on you. I don't know many anyway. Mine will be the reactions of but one editor who cares about you and whose ultimate goals are to have your paper look as good as possible and for you to be as well prepared for a rewarding law practice as possible.

The point of my editing is simply to illustrate for you some of the range of options you have in expressing an idea; to get you to think on your own about such options when you write, and rewrite. What I want to see in your "final final draft" is how you think your writing can be improved – throughout your entire paper – not how I thought it could be improved (or done differently).

Sometimes there will be "errors," such as leaving a word out of a sentence, or capitalizing something that normally would not be capitalized. But for the most part that will not be what I am trying to call to your attention.

So read through and edit your paper a number of times, focusing each time on just one of the following:

[P20]

• Grammatical errors.

• Words that are spelled correctly (that is, your word processor's spell checker didn't catch them) but clearly are not the words you want.

• Phrasing that is ambiguous.

• Generalizations and abstractions that need examples to communicate clearly.

• Concepts, or labels, that are explained later in the paper but unknown to the reader when first used.

• Paragraphs that would read better if broken into two or more paragraphs.

• Paragraphs that don't flow from one to the next and would benefit from a transition.

• Sentences that are, unintentionally, incomplete.

• Sentences that are way, way too long, and would benefit from being broken up.

• Inconsistency in tense, voice or person.

• Words such as "recently" that may be confusing to someone reading your paper seven years from now. (Just refer to the year when whatever it was occurred.)

• Errors in Blue Book citation form.

[P21]

Quotes.

When do you put quoted material in the text of your paper and when in an endnote? As with everything else from me there is no rule. But think about the following.

• To the maximum extent possible the paper should be your ideas and expression not quotes from others.

• Having met the page minimums in your first final draft, you want to make your final final draft as short and readable as possible. Does the additional quote contribute to, or detract from, a reader's desire to continue reading your paper?

• A quote in the text needs to be "set up." Who said it? When and why? Sometimes students simply insert something inside quotation marks with no explanation whatsoever in the surrounding text. Why are you quoting, rather than putting the idea into your own words (with, of course, a footnote acknowledging your source)? How does it support what you have been saying?

• A quote ought to be an especially skillful or colorful turn of phrase, pithy and insightful; a statement from some well-known (and relevant) person; or language that needs to be precisely quoted from its source, such as a phrase from a statute or a quotable holding from a court opinion. If it's a lengthy quote from a statute, or a string of facts, consider paraphrasing a couple of examples, or the most important portion, and then put the full quote, with its source, in an endnote or appendix.

• And remember that one of the advantages of publishing on the Internet is that you don't have to copy huge portions of relevant material and include it in the hard copy for a reader who would otherwise not have easy access to it. You can simply include a link to the original material (if it is available on the Internet), with guidance as to the relevant portions, and the reader can, if she wishes, see the entire text.

Additional Conferences.

We have both (a) minimums for writing and academic credit, and (b) what you and I are willing to do above and beyond that.

Once (a) you've submitted a topic, outline, and draft of the minimum length, (b) we've held the scheduled conferences, (c) you've done a rewrite, (d) you've made an oral presentation, and (e) your paper has been posted to the Web, the minimums are met.

Above and beyond that, I'm willing to meet with you, look over intermediate drafts, or anything else you find helpful that is consistent with 24-hour days and my other obligations. Such additional efforts on your part will not, as such, affect your grade – only insofar as they produce a better end product. So it is, in no sense, a "requirement." Just an offer.

Writing Center.

Once you have submitted a first final draft that is entirely your work product, you are free to get assistance from anywhere you can find it. You are certainly not only permitted, but encouraged, to utilize the services of the professionals in the College of Law Writing Center if you are so inclined. (I use it for some of my writing, so why shouldn't you?) You might, however, want to share with them a printout of this Web page and a copy of the section of your paper showing my edits just to give them some guidance as to what I have in mind. You are not to use the services of the Writing Center, or others, in the preparation of your first final draft.

A part of the seminar experience involves a 30-40 minute (depending on the number of presenters) oral presentation by you of your paper to your colleagues. This usually involves about a 10-minute talk, followed by 20 minutes of discussion: questions by you of the others, and your answers to their questions of you.

Depending on the number of participants we will be scheduling two to four presentations each of the last three seminar sessions.

Yes, this means that those presenting first are free to use, as their advance distribution to their colleagues, a draft of their paper preliminary to their "first final draft." But all participants should have their material well mastered by this time, and everyone will have had some input from me throughout the semester. So presenting early should not be a problem, and actually offers a number of advantages to the presenter.

Content and style. You are free to structure your presentation however you choose – so long as there is some description of what's in your paper and enough time for Q and A. From the standpoint of the portion of your grade that reflects your presentation, I'm mostly interested in (1) the substance of what you have to say, (2) your ability to do an adequate job of public speaking (e.g., sufficient rehearsal and familiarity with the material to stay within time limits and avoid the need to "read" a text), and (3) to lead a law school seminar discussion. I'm not looking (or increasing grades) for "production values." They are, however, fun and some students choose to use Power Point slides, audio and video tapes, or creative techniques for interaction with their colleagues.

Please note, as mentioned in Participants' Responsibilities, that a failure to make your presentation will result in a failing grade for the seminar. This is just one additional good reason to try to get your presentation scheduled early. That way, if an emergency comes up, and you can find someone to switch with you (sufficiently early that participants have time to read all papers before the relevant seminar session), you're still able to meet this seminar requirement. The reason for this penalty, as mentioned elsewhere, is that when you are making a presentation you are the seminar for that session. Thus, if you're scheduled for the last meeting, and don't show, there's no way for you to "make up" that requirement.

1. The most common mistake made by presenters in the past has been the failure to plan/rehearse sufficiently to allow time for everything. Presenters should be able to assume that everyone has read their paper. A very brief (5-10 minute) summary is OK (though not necessary), but a lengthy (e.g., 25 of 40 minutes) description of (or, worse yet, reading from) the paper is not.

2. Ideally, you should be sufficiently familiar with the material that you can speak extemporaneously without reference to a text. It is, among other things, a more effective/engaging way to communicate with a group. (However, if having to do that really throws you for a loop, the purpose of this exercise is not to stress you out and make you uncomfortable. So if the only way you can do it is to refer to a prepared text, feel free to do so.)

3. (a) Don't overlook the opportunity your presentation offers you to improve your paper (e.g., the interaction with other participants, and a rare comment from the instructor -- this is primarily your show). (b) Besides, rather than just repeat the contents of your paper, it makes for a better discussion if you raise with the group the problems you ran into, the unresolved questions you still have, the related issues or options you could have, but didn't, explore, the potential application of other bodies of law, or ways you're thinking about possibly reorganizing the paper. (c) Ideally, something will come out of a discussion of such matters that you can use in revising and improving your paper.

4. You should have some questions in mind for seminar participants to keep the discussion going, since you are primarily leading a discussion rather than providing a "lecture." (The participants, in turn, will be instructed to have questions for you.) The questions should test participants' knowledge of, and ability to work with and apply, the material in your paper. But the answers may also provide you some insight into areas of your analysis that were apparently not clear to most readers, where you may need more illustrations and examples, or a little fuller explanation, or a transition that wasn't obvious.

5. You should also designate something on the order of 10-15 additional pages of assigned reading (available from the Internet) in addition to your paper. This might be a portion of a law review article you found especially provocative, or a court opinion -- something that will add to the participants' comprehension of the issues and things to think about.

6. All of which makes the point that you might want to think of this experience as your trial run at being a law professor (or presenter at a continuing legal education session, or a college's pre-law majors club). This is your chance to present material in the way you have found most useful from the professors who were, given your learning style, most effective. Or a presentation style that none used, but you wished they had. Some past presenters have used Power Point effectively ("effectively" meaning in this context, among other things, that it didn't use up the bulk of their allocated time). Some have used role playing, or brief quizzes. Use your imagination. Have some fun with this. But those choices are strictly up to you; they're not a part of the "requirement" of your presentation. All you're required to do is direct a solid, substantive discussion of the issues.

What follows is designed to give you a heads up on what we’ll be doing during our research paper one-on-one conferences.

1. It’s up to you to reserve the available time that best suits your convenience.  My assistant will have a schedule of available times.  As always, earlier is better than later; I can’t see everyone Friday afternoons.

Here’s some idea of a default schedule and available times.  Half-hour time slots Thursdays, Fridays and Mondays: 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 1:00 and 1:30. Those should be enough to cover everyone.  We will save slots on Friday afternoon for genuine emergencies.

However, if you really can’t make any of the times indicated, and want to arrange another time I will, of course, make every effort to try to accommodate you.

2. One of the purposes of running the outlines by me early is to get me locked in on your paper’s basic focus, topic, content and organization.  You will be grateful to know that seems to have worked.  So, with rare exception, we won’t subsequently be talking about those important features of your paper that would require massive additional work after you thought you were nearly finished.

3. What I will do with your “first final drafts” is, in part, a function of what you have done with them.  For example, some of you will be closer to a professionally polished final draft than others.  I tend to give relatively less detailed editing attention to drafts that are either (a) so nearly letter perfect as to not require it (a very rare occurance during my 40 years of teaching), or (b) so incomplete or tentative that any work I put in on them is unlikely to be used by you.

[P24]

4. Levels and purposes of revision.

(a) There is a minimal amount of rewriting that the law school requires of you for a “writing credit” and academic credit for a seminar (see the current Student Handbook for details).  That requirement is our conference and your preparation of a “second draft” I find satisfactory.  That’s all the law school requires you to do for this seminar.

(b) Beyond that, however, there is (1) your personal pride in the quality of your work, especially (2) work that will be posted on the Web for all to see, and (3) the impact on your grade of an improved “final final draft.”

(c) Finally, you are entering a profession of wordsmiths.  There is little lawyers do that is not reading, listening, writing or talking.  How well you do professionally (e.g., won-lost record, recognition, advancement – and income) and, more importantly, how much pleasure you get out of it, will be overwhelmingly determined by how much comfort and skill you have as a wordsmith.

That means practice and coaching.  I am happy to work with you in that way – up to the reasonable limits imposed on both of us by our other obligations in life.  Choosing to do this will affect your grade only minimally, if at all.  It’s not worth your time for that reason.  I’m not required to offer; you’re not required to accept.  I just offer this pro bono service as a friend to any of you who want to put in additional time.

5. During our conferences we will talk about the aspects of your paper discussed below.  Have you done an adequate amount of legal research and demonstration of legal skills?  Does the progression of your analysis need an additional paragraph or section?

But much of what we’ll talk about is your writing.  During this discussion please bear these things in mind.

(a) I like you.  My comments about, and editing on, your paper do not represent a judgment about you.  They indicate that I care about you and want to be helpful.  Take them in that spirit.

(b) Nor are they merely my prior justification for the really awful grade that you are going to get in this seminar.  Nobody is going to get an awful grade – and especially not you.  K-12 testers make a distinction between “assessment” (useful for coaches) and “evaluation” (used for “grading”).  Our conferences involve assessment, not evaluation.  It’s helpful for you to make clear to me what you were trying to say.  It’s neither necessary nor helpful to fall into the mode of trying to “defend,” like the good lawyer you are becoming, your every choice of word and punctuation.

(c) Especially is it not the case that my editorial suggestions represent the “correct” way to write, and that your choice of words is “wrong” (with some obvious exceptions).  My suggestions are just that, suggestions.  They are an effort to get you to confront the realization that there really are a lot of alternative ways to say something, and to get you into the habit of thinking up and trying out those alternatives, rather than just leaving on paper the first expression that comes to mind.

Legal writing. During the course of your career you may be called upon to write op-ed columns for the newspaper, speeches, advertising copy, newsletters and brochures, business plans, news releases, and a variety of other non-legal documents.  You may choose on your own to write short stories, screen plays or poetry.  All are useful skills to have.

But what we’re emphasizing in this seminar paper assignment is a display of your ability to do legal research and writing. And the more of it you show me the more substantive your paper and the better your grade.

So, what am I looking for?  Such of the following as are appropriate to your paper.

• Your ability to use your legal skills in an innovative and creative way

• Your first-year skills at pulling the holding from a case, and synthesizing a group of holdings into propositions of law.

• Your ability to interpret the legal language in contracts, statutes and administrative regulations.

• Your skill at working with legislative history.

• The quality of your legal analysis, organization, and persuasive presentation of your arguments; your ability to “think like a lawyer.”

• The thoroughness and the quantity of legal research you have done and the breadth of your sources (e.g., court opinions, statutory material, law review articles).

• The extent to which your citation form conforms to the Blue Book,

• and, of course, the quality of your writing

And then there’s the matter of innovation, creativity and substantive contribution.  This is the whipped cream topping.  Not every topic lends itself.  But I’m obviously going to be impressed with – and reserve the top grades for – genuinely creative approaches to law and policy that have the potential of making a unique substantive contribution to the literature (and practice) of the law.

A certain amount of “journalism” is required.  You need a topic sentence (“lead”) and an introduction to set the stage and explain the purpose of your paper.  You need to describe the nature and general significance of the technology, problem, or issue you’re addressing.  You may want to say a little something about the operation of the Internet (beyond a simple dropped endnote to the ACLU v. Reno findings of fact).  That’s not only OK, it’s sometimes necessary.

But the primary thing I’ll be looking for, in a law school writing seminar, will be your demonstration of legal skills.

[P27]

Clarity and lean writing.  When less is more; when more is more.  Lean writing.

It’s a rare piece of writing (whether journalism, court opinion – or this memo) that can’t be improved by removing excess words.  Your writing is no exception.

I wrote a column for the local paper on K-12 education issues every two weeks during my school board term, 1998-2001. The requirement was something between 647 and 649 words. That meant every time I added a word or phrase I would have to take that much out. It proved to be a useful exercise in lean writing.

Don't go to extremes. Keep your text understandable. But try to take a look at every word in every sentence and ask yourself if it could be removed (a) without harming the content, and (b) possibly making it even more clear. If so, delete it.

On the other hand, it’s also a rare piece of writing that doesn’t reflect the author’s assumptions about what “everybody knows.”  Sometimes it’s a matter of a referent not being clear (e.g., “that,” “their,” “its”).  Sometimes it’s the use of a word or concept that needs a definition, or example.  (This can be provided in an additional paragraph, sentence, parenthetical clause, endnote, or appendix.)

Plagiarism. Thankfully, plagiarism is extraordinarily rare around here. But when it occurs it is very serious. And because it goes to basic trustworthiness it is directly applicable to evaluating a law student's fitness to be a member of the bar.

It is up to you to find out what it is. And it's a lot more than what I am about to say. But the bottom line is that you need to credit those from whom you get ideas, approaches or insights (which you may not have occasion to quote) -- as well as textual passages you quote (or should) or paraphrase.

If you have questions, ask don't assume. Punishments vary. But this instructor's recommendation to the law school and university administration is always expulsion from law school with notification to the multi-state bar examiners – and, of course, a failing grade for the seminar.

[P28]

Length requirements.

You are probably familiar with the line attributed to Abraham Lincoln when asked how long a man's legs should be: "Long enough to reach the ground."

I would encourage you to take a similar approach to the question, "How long should my paper be?" It should be long enough to cover the subject.

By contrast, when I was U.S. Maritime Administrator I asked a ship owner how come he built a 83,517-ton tanker, rather than the then more common 100,000 ton variety. "Because that's all the money I had," he replied.

The goal here is not to write precisely 20 pages because that's the minimum requirement, or that it represents all the time you had. The goal is to write a quality paper that covers the subject in no less than 20 pages.

For any who are focused on doing absolutely not one word more than the absolute minimum, however, bear in mind the following:

• There are page minimums associated with various levels of law school writing and academic credit spelled out in the current Student Handbook. Note that those minimums are exclusive of endnotes. That is why, among other reasons, you are to submit your paper with endnotes rather than the footnotes that would make it somewhere between difficult or impossible to count the pages of actual text.

• Most students have a pretty responsible notion of what "20 pages" means, need not worry, and will have no problem with length requirements.

• But given the ingenuity of the occasional student who seeks to game the system by figuring out just how few words he or she can use and still "fill" a page, "pages" will be defined for those students in terms of total words in a paper (or average words per page) -- not counting headings, endnotes, and other such material -- as well as "pages" as such. (For example, 4500 words in a 14 point Courier font can fill nearly twice as many pages as the same words in Times Roman 12.) A normal "page" will be defined as between 225 and 250 words. Thus, a "20-page" paper would run between 4500 and 5000 words.

• Any material judged by the instructor to be "padding" will be deducted from the page (or word) count. Examples might include, but are not limited to:

• lengthy quotes, charts or tables that could better be cut, or included in endnotes or an appendix
• extra wide margins on quotes
• unnecessary spacing between headings and text
• disproportionate amounts of "journalistic writing" or mere repetition of well-settled legal principles ("black letter law").

[P29]

Proof reading, attention to detail.  Reread, in my Web-posted piece called “So You Want to be a Lawyer,” about the senior partners who have, literally, thrown writing back at associates because of a simple typo.  I want to help you help yourself prevent this ever happening to you.  Law firms don’t hire law school graduates for the thrill of editing the new hires’ sloppy work product.  The partners think you are there because you can edit and write better than they can.  They assume it is you who will be editing, and improving, their writing rather than the other way around.  Your success turns on your proving their assumption correct.

It is not at all uncommon for a good writer to put any piece of writing through ten or more rewrites.  It’s highly unlikely that even one percent of the students coming through this law school will ever be able to dash off first drafts of beautiful, polished prose.

You need to proof read: to read, and reread, and reread again.  Read for sentences that are too long.  Read again for agreement of tense and number.  (For example, a corporation is an “it” not a “they.”)  Read again, aloud, for cadence.  Constantly ask yourself about every word and phrase: “Are there other ways of saying this?  What are they?  Would any make the idea easier to grasp, the writing more interesting to read, than what I have now?”  Read for clarity (“Do I need an example, illustration, citation of authority, or a restatement of this proposition?”)  Read for grammar, spelling (“spell checkers” aren’t enough when you've chosen the wrong word but spelled it correctly), and citation form.  Then read it again, considering it as a whole.

Think of yourself as a sculptor, or potter – an artist whose medium is words rather than marble or clay.  Put a little more here; scrape some off there.  Start over.

Hard work?  Yeah, I guess so.  But it’s also fun, creative, and satisfying if you pay attention to what you’re doing.  Take some delight from each creative tweak of phrase instead of just struggling through it as fast as you can.  It will pay you dividends many times over during the next fifty years.

What’s next?  What I will do is to (a) read your first final draft paper carefully, and (b) provide fairly detailed editing on the first few pages (usually five or ten).

Why have I not tightly edited the entire paper?  Because that is a part of what you are to do as your rewrite.

Why have I done as much as I have?  Because I want to give you enough examples of what I’m looking for that you can extrapolate from them to the rest of your paper.

Giving it as great (or greater) a degree of care as I have, and looking for the kinds of things I've noted (and just discussed, above), what do you see that can be improved?  Then, as stand-up comic Lewis Black says, “Fix it!” [It's his reference to the depleted ozone. "We've got rockets. We've got saran wrap. Fix it!"]

How much you will need to fix to meet the minimum rewrite standard will depend on how much needs fixing.  How much you want to fix beyond that, for the reasons listed above, is up to you.

If your paper is in relatively good shape, you may be required to fix all of it. Why? Because there isn’t that much to fix and it won’t take you very long.

If you need relatively more help with your writing, you need to learn and practice some editing skills, and there is a lot of fixing to do, we may select a few pages of your paper for you to practice on.  You will rewrite, and rewrite, those pages until they are close to perfect – in addition to whatever overall changes the paper may require.

[P31]

What is a “first final draft”? As noted above, your first final draft is something that represents your very best work. There is nothing more that you see you could do to improve it. You would be willing to show it to a future potential employer.

Anyone who gives me a paper that may require additional research, endnotes, conclusions or other entire sections, as well as substantial editing, risks the penalties of not having met the first final draft deadline at all. At a minimum I will probably withhold thorough editing until you provide me what really represents, in fact, your final, best effort at a “first final draft.” (This is not because I am mean spirited by nature. It is because there is little point for either of us to my putting in hours of editing on text you’re not going to use anyway.)

In fairness to the timely participants, there will be a substantial penalty – increasing over time, and in the discretion of the instructor – in the grades of those whose first final drafts are late. This penalty includes, but is not limited to, a discounting for the added time the tardy author had to complete this stage.

However, such delays will neither short circuit the process nor extend the deadline for the final final draft.

(a) Once you have submitted to me a completed first final draft I will still need to edit it.

(b) We will, thereafter, still need to have an additional conference about it, and

(c) you will still need to prepare and submit a final final draft by the stated deadline.

[P32]

Final final drafts and Web posting.  Following our conference on your first final draft, the last stage is for you to give me, both in electronic form (e.g., CD, floppy disk, or email attachment) and in hard copy, your final final draft.  Bear in mind that this will be uploaded to our Web site where you can refer potential employers to it as a writing sample and impress your friends with your published work. (See, in this connection, "Web Publication, Internet and E-mail Requirements.")

(a) It is a requirement of the seminar that your final final draft be posted on the Internet as a link from our seminar Web site. If you already have your own personal Web page, or choose to use this course as an opportunity to create one, of course your paper can also be a link from that page. (As explained before, your creating a personal Web site is neither a requirement nor a source of extra credit for this seminar.) You may also, if you wish, upload any PowerPoint presentation you've used.

(b) You do not need to be able to upload a document to the Web. I will do that for you (or help you do it if you want to learn how). The primary minimal obligation you have in this regard is to get me an electronic version of your paper that is either (1) already in HTML format, ready to upload, or (b) can be transformed (by me) into HTML format.

(c) Many word processing programs’ document files end up stripping out the endnote calls and endnotes when they are either inserted, or copied and pasted, into HTML. So if you are not going to give me an HTML file, ready to upload – and it's perfectly acceptable for you not to – please follow this procedure:

(1) Use whatever word processing software you prefer. It makes it lots easier to have the program automatically renumber endnotes when you move text around.

(2) Once you have your final final draft in the form you want, print it out.

(3) Save the file you were working on both on the hard drive and on a backup medium.

(4) Call up the file again and save it with a different name – but this time use the “save as” command to save it in “text” format, which is sometimes called ASCCI, ANSI, or DOS.

(5) Call up the “.txt” file and see if the endnote calls, and endnotes, are there. If not, insert them manually. (You can usually capture all the endnotes at once from your main document in a block-copy-and-paste move and put them into the “.txt” file.)

(6) Save the “.txt” file on your hard drive and backup medium.

(7) Provide me both the word processing formatted file and the “.txt” file.

(8) If you are using a Mac, make sure the floppy you give me, and its file, can be read by an IBM-compatible computer.

(d) What I will, and will not, do to improve the formatting and appearance of your Web-posted paper:

Although Web-publication of your paper is a requirement of this seminar, learning how to write in HTML, or otherwise construct Web pages, is not. I am (usually) able to do whatever needs to be done to post your paper with at least minimally acceptable appearance. I will upload your paper and make some minor formatting improvements. However, any additional refinements -- for example, "links" and "targets" between each of your endnote calls and endnotes -- are up to you (either on your own or with my instruction).

You can see from prior years' seminars (both Cyberspace and Economics of Law Practice) what other students have chosen to do.

To help you understand the formatting process, here are some of the steps I go through:

(1) Assuming I get your paper in electronic form in MS Word, or comparable word processor format, if you have not yet done it I will do a "Save As" in "text" format.

(2) I then bring it up in that format, block and copy (or "Select All") text and notes, go to Netscape and using "file," "open," "new," and "blank page," then "paste" and change the font in Netscape to Arial 14. (In my experience, other procedures may result in removing the note calls, deleting the endnotes entirely, or otherwise modifying the paper.)

(3) This carries over the note calls, and the endnotes. However, it removes spacing between paragraphs, any italics, bold, or other formatting of that sort.

(4) I usually center and increase the font on the title and your name, and any other heading material.

(5) Spaces are inserted between paragraphs and after subheadings.

(6) Horizontal lines are inserted between the headings and beginning text (or table of contents), between the text and beginning of endnotes, and at the end.

(7) With Netscape's "format," "page colors and properties," at least some metatags are inserted. (These are the name given your paper at the top of the screen when someone is looking at it, plus your name, and a brief description, and key words, that search engines like Google use when responding to someone's search request.)

None of the above takes all that long.

What takes longer, and I normally do not have the time to do, is the preparation of "targets" and "links" from, for example, your table of contents or each of your note calls. Targets and links mean that a reader can click on your note call and be taken immediately to your endnote; clicking "back" then takes them back to where they were in the text.

Ditto for headings and subheadings in your table of contents that can take readers to those sections of your paper.

Ditto for the preparation (and then testing and confirming) of the links you can create from the URL references in your endnotes (that will enable a reader to merely click on your cited URL (i.e., the "http://www . . .") in order to go to the actual document you are citing).

Ditto for pictures, charts, graphs, Power Point slides, or the necessary preparation of what HTML calls "tables" -- unless they can be done quickly and easily.

This kind of tweaking, and the numerous other things that can be done to fancy up a Web page document, need not take all that much time for an individual paper; I usually do it for papers of mine that I post to the Web (as I have with this document). But it does become a pretty time-consuming undertaking if one is doing this for all the papers for a seminar.

So you have the following options:

(1) accept what I am able to do with formatting your paper and leave it at that,

(2) do it all yourself and present me with the paper in HTML with the precise formating you'd like to see on the Web site, or

(3) come see me for some simple instruction in how you can do at least some of this yourself, or work along with me in my office on it. (To the extent I have the time I am always happy to share with you what little I know about Web page creation. It's really quite easy. At least the basics. I enjoy playing with this stuff anyway and would be happy to have you play along if you want.)

You can look at prior years' Web-posted papers from the Economics of Law Practice seminar to get an idea of what others have done with their papers. (Previous Cyberspace Law Seminar sites have links to their papers as well. The URL will be https://www.nicholasjohnson.org/ . . . and then cls plus 01 or 02, and so forth for 2001, 2002; e.g., https://www.nicholasjohnson.org/cls03.)

Please understand that none of this affects your grade -- just the way in which you present yourself to the world of Internet users who may happen upon (or be directed by you to) your paper.

Conclusion

Try to have some fun with this paper. You, too, can experience the joys of working with your words like a potter works with clay. Make me a work of art -- with arguments that hold water.