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Please join us for the next Women in Law Section Meeting |
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Tuesday, October 25, 2011 11:45am Akron Bar Association
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| Topic: You Write Like a Girl: Do Gender Differences Exist in Persuasive Legal Writing?
Speaker: Professors Ann Schiavone and Sarah Morath Description: In this one hour presentation, the presenters will be discussing their on-going research evaluating whether noticeable differences exist in the persuasive writing of male and female first year law students. The presentation will include discussion of the foundational research that prompted out legal-writing specific study, as well as the quantitative and qualitative research methods being employed. First, they will discuss their evaluation of the actual word use in the briefs of first year students, focusing on those areas in which studies have shown men and women vary including: word length, sentence length, use of conjunctions, articles, auxiliary verbs, reference to emotion, etc. Second, they will discuss their survey of legal writing professors about gender differences they notice in legal writing. Lastly, they will discuss their use of student interviews as a source for possible explanations for such gender differences.
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