Suzanne Rowe, Director of the Legal Research and Writing Program at the University of Oregon, received the 2012 Thomas F. Blackwell Award, one of the most prestigious awards in the legal writing field.
Professor Rowe is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law, where she was a Stone Scholar. She clerked for a federal judge in the Southern District of California and then practiced law as a tax associate in Washington, D.C. Before joining the faculty at Oregon, she taught at the University of San Diego and Florida State University. She was a Luvaas Faculty Fellow from 2008 to 2010 and was named a Dean's Distinguished Faculty Fellow in 2010.
She is the co-author of five books on legal research and is the editor of the State Legal Research Series published by Carolina Academic Press. She has a new book coming out on Federal Legal Research. She writes a monthly column, The Legal Writer, in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin, which takes a fresh look at writing problems.
The Blackwell Award is given to a legal writing professor who has made “an outstanding contribution to improve the field of legal writing” by demonstrating the ability to nurture and motivate students to excellence; creating and integrating new ideas for teaching and motivating legal writing educators and students; and helping other legal writing educators improve their teaching skills or their legal writing programs.
A joint message from ALWD President Lyn Goering and LWI President Ken Chestek notes that many legal writing professors are aware of Suzanne’s public service, including as a past member of the ALWD and LWI Boards of Directors, as past chair of the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning and Research, as past ALWD Liaison to the ABA Council, as current chair of the ABA’s Communication Skills Committee, and as the mastermind of many informal events to welcome and support new legal writing directors. But the announcment message from ALWD and LWI notes that it was her behind-the-scenes work that won her the unanimous support for the nomination.
