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22 Legal Writing: J. Legal Writing Inst. 28 (2018)
Joe Williams and Discourse Communities - The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute and Community Service

handle is hein.journals/jlwriins22 and id is 32 raw text is: JOE WILLIAMS AND DISCOURSE COMMUNITIES-THE JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL WRITING INSTITUTE AND COMMUNITY SERVICE Terrill Pollman* Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding intimacy and mutual valuing --Rollo May.' Whether the vessel is a legal document or a rap song, language is often chosen to exclude. To use a scholarly phrase, discourse communities are often gated, so it's the good writer's job to offer readers a set of keys. --Roy Peter Clark 2 I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute. And I am even more grateful for the role the Journal has played in my professional and intellectual life. I do not overstate when I say that its articles have taught me, inspired me, stretched me, moved me, improved me, and in essential ways, changed me as a teacher, a writer, a person. Among those that I have treasured, the article that has meant the most to me is the first Journal article I ever read: the lead article of Volume One, On the Maturing of Legal Writers: Two Models of Growth and Development by Joseph M. Williams.3 Williams, a master composition theorist, sets out the theoretical basis for novice learning theory and applies the theory to explain the writing skills (or perhaps more accurately, the lack of writing skills) exhibited by first-year law students. His conclusion is that novice law students are better able to learn the higher-level critical thinking skills when the students and the tasks are embedded in the * Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Thank you to Linda Berger. I am also grateful to Karen Sneddon and Elizabeth Lynn Inglehart for helpful editorial comments. 1 Rollo May, POWER AND INNOCENCE: A SEARCH FOR SOURCES 246 (1998). 2 Roy Peter Clark, THE GLAMOUR OF GRAMMAR: A GUIDE TO THE MAGIC AND MYSTERY OF PRACTICAL ENGLISH, 45 (2011). 3 1 LEG. WRITING 1 (1991).

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