As academic disciplines mature, professors with specialized interests within their field often gravitate toward each other to pursue their interests collectively. Eventually, members of a group might find themselves collaborating on presentations, articles, or similar endeavors, with the goal of advancing an academic specialty.

To our knowledge, however, few such groups appear to exist in the LRW community (notable exceptions: applied legal storytelling; LWI’s Discipline-Building Working Group’s bibliography program). Our presentation hopes to model how LRW professors can come together to explore a single aspect of the legal writing field. We’ll discuss how we brought together over two dozen professors who share an interest in the authors and ideas associated with classical rhetoric and how that timeless topic influences contemporary law/practitioners.

Attendees will receive specific guidance about many “nuts and bolts” topics, of which the following are representative, leaving the presentation (we hope) inspired to form similar working groups with other LRW professors who share their interests: Finding like-minded professors; getting past the awkward “first date” phase; creating goals for the group, and

a timeline to accomplish them – and then sticking to it!; accounting for the different interests of participants; bringing everyone together with technology.