Stinson, J M --- "Generating interest, enthusiasm, and opportunity for scholarship: how law schools and law firms can create a community and culture supportive of scholarship" [2013] LegEdDig 30; (2013) 21(2) Legal Education Digest 50

• Generating interest, enthusiasm, and opportunity for scholarship: how law schools and law firms can create a community and culture supportive of scholarship

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Generating interest, enthusiasm, and opportunity for scholarship: how law schools and law firms can create a community and culture supportive of scholarship

J M Stinson

Legal Communication and Rhetoric, Vol. 9, 2012, pp 315-326

As with all things in life, we are more likely to produce scholarship if we are required to do so. But scholarship is rarely a requirement of law practice. Even in the academy, scholarship is not required for many professors who teach legal writing. And for many in these two groups, scholarship is not even expected. Furthermore, although scholarship may have been required or expected at some point for some practitioners and law school faculty, requiring continued scholarship is much more difficult after partnership or tenure.

Institutional barriers can also make scholarship more difficult even for those who are motivated to write. Time spent on scholarship detracts not only from other work, such as client representation and teaching, but it also detracts from time we can spend with our families, friends, and communities. In addition, even in places where scholarship is generally valued, less value is often placed on scholarship about legal writing and on scholarship by legal writing faculty. Yet even when not required and even in the face of these institutional barriers, many lawyers and academics would produce scholarship under the right conditions.

For many who care deeply about professional legal writing, though, the problem is that we often see scholarship as selfish: it is enjoyable, it helps us, and it therefore must hurt our clients, firms, students, or institutions. We need to change that perception. Scholarship not only creates knowledge – hence, is a form of public service – it also makes us better lawyers and teachers. It can help reduce the burnout that results from doing the same thing over and over. The intellectual challenge of drafting articles breaks up the monotony of our normal routine. Furthermore, scholarship actually helps our own institutions. For law firms, having an ‘expert’ can bring in business. For government offices, creating positive public relations is helpful. For law schools, generating more scholarship helps the institution’s reputation.

For others, fear keeps them from writing. Especially for those relatively new to the scholarship scene, insecurity about the quality of their work and the impression it will make with their colleagues can be paralysing. Whatever causes us to not write, we can, collectively, overcome the obstacles to scholarly production.

The solution largely lies in leading by example, as well as garnering support from others: the suggestions here are primarily about creating a culture that generates interest, enthusiasm, and opportunity for scholarship. As with all changes in culture, a lot depends on the existing culture. Both the expectations of others and support from others matter tremendously.

Generating interest corresponds to this culture change: ‘Make the Work Matter!’ The gist here is to create incentives for scholarship.

Money is often a good motivator. For those in law practice, pay in the immediate sense is rarely provided for scholarship. But publishing articles creates a long-term benefit; the author becomes an expert, and experts are generally more attractive to clients. In addition to client development, publishing can increase a lawyer’s prestige with her peers. This ‘rainmaking’ is a key component of success for many lawyers. For many who teach legal writing, a more immediate monetary incentive comes in the form of summer research grants. They also have the longer-term incentives in terms of future pay raises and mobility on the job market, which also often results in higher salaries.

In general, it will further both institutional and personal goals. So for those who want to write but feel as though they are not entitled to that luxury, the law firm or the law school should disabuse them of that notion.

For many, the writing they do needs to matter to those with power-partners, law school deans, and others. For that reason, when the scholarship is being produced in order to obtain partnership or tenure, reframing the situation might help. For example, recognising that producing scholarship can create valuable job security may be enough incentive to generate the interest in writing. When writing is seen simply as a necessary evil to avoid being fired, it is much harder to actually get excited about it.

Furthermore, when there is flexibility in scholarship expectations, it is easier to generate interest by encouraging writing on any topic. It is also often easier to start smaller, writing shorter pieces for bar journals, newsletters, and for writing publications that focus on these shorter, focused articles. Writing of any kind-short or long, doctrinal or procedural or theoretical – initiates a positive cycle and creates an expectation of continued writing. With any luck, producing some scholarship also makes it more likely that raises and summer grants will be available in the future, bringing monetary rewards. And the more the law professor or lawyer writes, the easier it is to write. This helps break the negative cycle and self-fulfilling prophesy that many of us experience – the ‘they won’t respect it so I shouldn’t do it’ block.

Finally, scholarly interest can be generated by encouraging interaction between those engaged in scholarship and those who are not yet writing scholarship.

Positive feedback matters to many people. Colleagues can encourage writers by engaging in discussions about their topics and being genuinely interested in their scholarly interests. Colleagues can encourage new lawyers and law professors to write on topics that genuinely matter to them. Whether it is wrongful convictions, environmental law, corporate takeovers, rhetoric, or composition theory, authors are much more likely to actually work on a paper when they are enthusiastic about the topic.

In addition to being encouraging generally and encouraging writing on a topic of the author’s personal interest, colleagues should encourage others to share their written work. Engaging with others about the work is important to nurturing the passion as well as to helping create a stronger article draft. But it also serves the essential function of creating deadlines. Deadlines force authors to sit down and write.

There are several ways to provide feedback and encouragement. Within a law office, setting aside time to meet and discuss projects can be both a rewarding and team-building exercise. Similarly, for law school faculty, traditional in-house, faculty-wide scholarship talks and workshops provide easy opportunities for obtaining feedback. These internal sessions can be scheduled on an as-needed basis or can occur weekly during the summer, for example. Unfortunately, for many – especially those newer to legal scholarship – that setting can be intimidating. Fortunately, for both lawyers and faculty, a number of alternatives exist. These settings allow the scholar to develop confidence in a ‘safe’ workshop setting where the participants are critical about the paper, not the person.

First, ‘invitation-only’ internal workshops can provide a safer audience yet permit a large number of people to provide input on the paper and engage with the author on her paper. Within a firm or government office, this can mean inviting the five most helpful mentors to work with three relatively new lawyers on their writing on, for example, a Friday afternoon. Expanding on this concept, intra-office or intra-school workshops can fill the same need. Finally, at least in the academic context, the ALWD Scholars’ Workshops/Forums’ and the LWI Writers’ Workshops are obvious sources of support and encouragement.

Those interested in encouraging scholarship by others should make clear that time for renewal is not only permitted but expected. Productivity increases when people take short breaks; maintaining a hectic pace can work for short periods of time but is not sustainable. Sabbaticals and summer breaks are key, but for academics at least, that is not only time for renewal but also the primary time to write.

Generating scholarship itself can also be a form of renewal. For practitioners and judges, scholarship provides an opportunity to intellectually engage with ideas and topics beyond what may be necessary to resolve clients’ needs or cases. For legal writing faculty, scholarship provides a break from teaching and can renew the passion to teach, just as teaching provides a break from scholarship and can renew the passion to write.

Not all scholars are created the same. What works for one person may spell disaster for another. The question is this, Where are the new writers in the writing process? What would help them move on? The best way to discover the answer is to ask each of those people what will make them more productive. For some, it may be scheduling practice group meetings or classes in the afternoon, as the morning is their best writing time. For others, it may be having someone set weekly or monthly deadlines-maybe three pages a week, or a new subsection by a certain date.

One way to meet their needs might be to assign writing partners, so each person in a firm or law school who wants to work on a project has a ‘buddy’ to consult with, share drafts, and encourage. These writing buddies could discuss what each person needs to be more productive someone to read drafts, someone to meet for two hours a month to brainstorm about particular challenges, someone to set deadlines, someone to send weekly reminders, or whatever would most help each of the writers. The reciprocal nature of the relationship increases the likelihood that each writer will feel more comfortable asking for help, and it helps meet each writer’s needs.

With very few exceptions, training on how to be a better scholar would benefit all writers. Organising brown-bag sessions where some of the firm’s or school’s accomplished scholars can share their tips for success can be one easy way to provide this training. For example, sessions can be offered on increasing publication opportunities, including discussions about the structure of successful articles, how to draft an effective title, timing for submission, and other strategies. Other sessions could be offered on how to effectively use SSRN and ExpressO, as well as drafting an effective cover letter.

Individual mentoring by good scholars is also tremendously helpful, although more time-consuming.

Scholarly productivity will increase if those committed to writing encourage others to write and make it a priority to write, even though time is limited. Share drafts, even though critical feedback is sometimes hard to take. Ask to read other people’s drafts, even though that also takes time. And keep in mind that encouraging scholarship is as much about creating a culture that expects and supports scholarship as it is about the actual writing.