Melissa Weresh
Professor Weresh is the Dwight D. Opperman Distinguished Professor of Law at Drake University Law School.
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.
Professor Weresh’s scholarship examines the art, science, and ethics of persuasion and advocates for the modernization of law school teaching. As one of her nominators noted, Professor Weresh’s CV “lists five books, five book chapters, and almost thirty law review articles,” in addition to numerous smaller publications and over 75 presentations. She also recently founded a working group on Threshold Concepts in Legal Writing, building on her prior articles and presentations. A second nominator pointed out that Professor Weresh “is never satisfied and is constantly striving to pursue the next idea, to ask the new questions, and to continuously advance our discipline through her scholarship.”
In addition, Professor Weresh has championed the professionalization of the legal writing discipline, including improving status for legal writing faculty. She has previously served as the President of the Legal Writing Institute, as chair of the AALS Teaching Methods Section, as a member of the LexisNexis Law School Publishing Advisory Board, and as a member of the Editorial Boards of both Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD and The Journal of Legal Education. In 2017, she was awarded the Thomas F. Blackwell Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Legal Writing.
Professors Suzanne Rowe and Danielle Shelton had the pleasure of surprising Professor Weresh with this award and were kind enough to share a screenshot of the surprise.
