Mary Beth Beazley is a Professor of Law at the University of Nevada-Law Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law. This Award honors Marjorie Rombauer whom many consider to be the mother of legal writing. She taught at the University of Washington School of Law for over thirty years and was the first non-librarian, tenured female faculty member. She wrote the first legal writing textbook, Legal Problem Solving: Analysis, Research, and Writing in 1970.
ALWD established the Marjorie Rombauer Award to recognize a person who has contributed significantly to the field of legal writing

• By education about the importance of legal writing;
• By published scholarship that advances the teaching of legal writing and the understanding of its underlying principles;
• By contributions to national legal writing organizations;
• By contributions to individual legal writing programs; and
• By efforts to improve the status of legal writing faculty.

Professor Mary Beth Beazley has been President, Chair, or Editor-in-Chief of all of legal writing’s most important institutions from LWI to ALWD to the LWI Journal and multiple committees in the ABA and AALS.

Professor Beazley’s scholarship focuses on the substance at the core of our discipline as legal writing faculty from metacognitive pieces to the interdisciplinary, combining the social perspective on writing with election law in her article on ballot design. She is the author of a widely used textbook: A Practical Guide to Appellate Advocacy.

Professor Beazley is a superb teacher always with good humor and creativity. Her teaching techniques have been adopted or used as a springboard for others’ creativity in many law schools.

The ALWD Board of Directors is honored to present the 2017 Marjorie Rombauer Award to Professor Mary Beth Beazley.