2008 Legal Writing Scholarship Grants
Sponsored by LWI & ALWD
Announcement and Application
The Legal Writing Institute (LWI) and the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) are pleased to announce the Legal Writing Scholarship Grants for teachers of legal research and writing for 2008. These grants reflect the two organizations’ commitment to the professional development of legal research and writing professionals.
Each year, LWI & ALWD award several research grants to legal research and writing teachers. These research grants enable gifted educators to spend their summers exploring scholarly ideas of interest to them and to produce scholarship that will assist others in the field. The grants also provide evidence of the two organizations’ support for the scholarly pursuits of legal research and writing professionals.
In the past, the grants have varied from $2000 to $5000. The number of grants awarded depends on the quality of the applications and funds available. The organizations award as many grants as feasible each year. Royalties from the ALWD Citation Manual are the primary source of ALWD funding each year.
In 2007 LWI and ALWD cooperatively evaluated twenty-one impressive applications and chose seven to fund. For the 2007 awards, the two organizations invested $27,500 in promoting scholarship projects by legal writing and research professors. For a list of the 2007 grants and names of the proposed projects see Previous Scholarship Recipients.
The joint LWI-ALWD committee that awards grants consists of two groups that function independently. One group blindly reviews and scores grant applications. The other group serves a mentoring function and applicants may approach the mentoring group for advice on the application. Mentors will not score applications or participate in any way in deciding who receives a grant. Application mentors for the 2008 application process are: Karin Mika (Cleveland Marshall); Terry Pollman (UNLV); Judy Stinson (ASU); Christine Venter (Notre Dame); and Sarah Ricks (Rutgers-Camden).
APPLICATION PROCEDURES
- Eligibility: The Legal Writing Scholarship Grants, sponsored by LWI & ALWD are open to both full-time and adjunct teachers of legal writing and research. Teachers who have previously received an LWI or ALWD Summer Research Grant are ineligible for this program for three years after they have received such a grant. LWI and ALWD Board members, officers, and members of either the LWI Scholarship Development Committee or the ALWD Scholarship Committee are ineligible to participate until they have been out of those positions for a full academic year. LWI and ALWD encourage proposals from both veteran professionals and those new to the field.
- Deadline: Applications must be received by 5 p.m. Pacific Time on February 1, 2008. Please email the Word document to btemplin@tjsl.edu.
- Application materials: The grant application is a separate Word document below. If you are missing the Application, please check the announcements on the LWI ListServ or Dircon, or email Ben Templin at btemplin@tjsl.edu for a copy.
- Application (992 KB)
- Where to get help and where to send the application: If you would like mentoring on applying for a Grant, please contact:
- Review Process and Standards: The Proposal Description of the Grant Application, including the Detailed Description/Abstracts, will be blindly reviewed by the non-mentoring members of the Joint LWI-ALWD Scholarship Committee. Personal information will be removed from the application before reviewers see it. Those members will rank and rate the proposals based on the following criteria:
- How well thought-out is the proposal?
- Is the topic one that has previously been covered in the relevant literature? If so, does the proposed work add something substantive to the discussion?
- Is the proposal well written?
- Does the author seem to be targeting appropriate research sources?
- Is the scope of the project realistic?
- Is the work likely to be published?
- Is the proposed work related to Legal Writing?
- If not, why not?
- Is the topic interesting, and likely to appeal to targeted readers?
- Are the research methods (empirical research, multi-disciplinary research, statistical analysis, traditional legal research) chosen likely to result in a quality written product?
- Selection date and grant disbursement: The committee will announce recipients of the research grants by April 1, 2008. At the time of selection, 60% of the research-grant award will be paid to each grant recipient. The grant recipient will receive the remaining 40% of the award when the written manuscript is completed and submitted to LWI and ALWD. “Completed,” for purposes of the grant, means that it has been accepted for publication. Grant recipients should submit the completed manuscript to the Joint LWI-ALWD Scholarship Committee along with a copy of the acceptance for publication.
- Mentors: At the time that the awards are announced, each grant recipient may be assigned a “mentor” by the Joint Scholarship Committee. It is the hope of LWI and ALWD that this mentor—chosen based upon the topic of the proposed scholarly work or any other criteria mutually agreed upon by the applicant and the Committee—will provide the recipient with guidance and assistance in developing the project through to completion and placing it for publication.
- Presentation: Papers supported by the Legal Writing Scholarship Grants, sponsored by LWI & ALWD may be presented by the author at either the next ALWD meeting or the next LWI biennial meeting following completion of the manuscript, if consistent with conference programming needs. This will allow the author the opportunity to share his or her scholarly efforts with the legal research and writing community, and also allow LWI & ALWD members to benefit first-hand from the scholarship supported by joint organization funding.
- Formalities: Grant winners should thank both LWI & ALWD for the grant in the footnotes of the article.
- Publication rights: Grant winners should negotiate permission from the publisher to post the article on the LWI and ALWD websites. This requirement can be waived if it would prevent placing the article in a well-regarded publication or require that the author purchase rights.
Sarah E. Ricks
Clinical Associate Professor & Co-Director,
Pro Bono Research Project
Rutgers School of Law–Camden
sricks@camden.rutgers.edu
Completed Grant Application should go to:
Ben Templin
Associate Professor
Thomas Jefferson School of Law
btemplin@tjsl.edu
The subject line of the email must read: Legal Writing Scholarship Grants.
The scholarship committee should advertise on the application and apply in its selection process, a bright-line rule that applicants are ineligible for three years if they have previously received a grant. The application form would require applicants to disclose if they have received the grant before and when as well as the citation for the article resulting from the prior grant. The joint board subcommittee would consider this information as a factor in its consideration of the ranked proposals.
Whether the person is eligible for funding from their own school should be a significant factor for the joint board subcommittee to weigh when awarding the grants. The scholarship committee should ask on the application whether the person is eligible for funding, if the person (or other LRW faculty) has ever received funding, and the amount of that funding. The application will also make clear that if funding is received after the grant is given the award will be reduced by the amount of that funding but the recipient will still retain the right to say that they received the award (on their CV).
At the time that the readers rank the submissions, they will not have information from which to identify the applicant. Once the anonymous readers have made their recommendations, those recommendations will be forwarded to the ALWD Board which will make the final recommendations for the grant recipients. At the time it makes its final selections, the ALWD Board will have access to the information on the application forms. This will be done so that the Board can balance the substantive review of the projects with due consideration for need (as reflected by eligibility for research grants at one’s own institution). Eligibility for or receipt of summer research grants from one’s own institution will not, per se, disqualify an applicant from eligibility, but preference will be given to those who have no other source for research funding.