Ellie Margolis
Professor Margolis is the Jack Feinberg Professor of Litigation at Temple University School of Law.
The Berger Award for Excellence in Legal Writing Scholarship is ALWD’s highest award recognizing scholarship in the field of legal writing. This award recognizes lifetime dedication to and advancement of legal writing scholarship. It celebrates those who have written influential articles, books, or essays or otherwise had a major impact on scholarship, perhaps through making presentations, mentoring, serving on editorial boards of various publications, sponsoring scholarship workshops and fora.
As Professor Margolis’s nomination letter explains:
For more than two decades, Professor Margolis has been an undeniable force working to build the discipline of legal writing through her scholarship, presentations, and service in the national legal writing community. She was the founding chairperson of the Discipline Building Working Group, a former editor of Legal Writing, a regular mentor—whether formally or informally of legal writing scholarship, and a prolific contributor in the growing body of legal writing scholarship. In terms of legal writing scholars, she is one of our community pillars. Perhaps most importantly, Professor Margolis deeply believes in the authenticity of legal writing as a legitimate and separate field of scholarly inquiry. She writes both about the substance or nature of legal writing as well as its pedagogy. She passionately advocates for legal writing professors to engage in legal writing scholarship production and consumption. She dedicates hours to her convictions by mentoring and encouraging other scholars in the field. And she has participated in the work of editing scholarship for publication.
Professor Margolis was appointed to lead the LWI Discipline Building Working Group by then-LWI President, Professor Linda Berger. Professor Margolis' leadership resulted in LWI writing retreats, the Phelps Award recognizing excellent individual scholarly works, and other discipline-building advancements. As an author, her work on policy argumentation has directly influenced legal writing instruction across the country and her scholarship on visual legal writing has helped define that field. Her selection for the 2025 Berger Award recognizes both her contributions to legal writing scholarship and her impact on the field of legal writing scholarship itself.
