Professor Fischer received her B.A. and M.A. in English from Bradley University and her J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She then became a partner in a large litigation firm in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. After teaching at the University of Cincinnati and Chapman University, she joined the faculty at the University of Louisville’s Louis D. Brandeis School of Law in 2000. She teaches legal writing and women and the law. Professor Fischer serves on the editorial boards of Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute and Kentucky's Bench and Bar Journal. She has presented programs on legal writing at national conferences and has taught continuing legal education courses in Kentucky, California, and Ohio, and Oregon. She has also lectured at universities in South Africa, Germany, Finland, and the United Kingdom. Professor Fischer's scholarship includes articles on legal writing, advocacy, women and the law, and torts. Her 2005 book Pleasing the Court: Writing Ethical and Effective Briefs examines professionalism in legal writing through numerous examples of judges' reactions to lawyers' errors.
Student Evaluations of teaching
Implications of Recent Research on Student Evaluation of Teaching, Montana Law Professor (2006)
This article discusses recent research about student evaluations of professors (sometimes called "student ratings.") Recent...
How to Improve Student Ratings: Views from the Trenches, University of Baltimore Law Review (2004)
This article reports a study about student ratings of professors (sometimes called “student evaluations of...
Legal Writing
Dismiss Those Sixth-Grade Hobgoblins, Kentucky Bench & Bar (2007)
Legal writers may have internalized false rules about writing. For example, they may believe the...
Texts, Lies, and Changed Positions, Perspectives: Teaching Legal research and Writing (2007)
This review of Judge Richard Posner's Little Book of Plagiarism concludes that the book adds...
Why George Orwell’s Ideas about Language Still Matter for Lawyers, Montana Law Review (2007)
This article examines George Orwell’s theories about language and applies them to contemporary legal discourse...
Avoiding Plagiarism in Legal Documents, Kentucky Bench & Bar (2006)
Lawyers may believe they know what constitutes plagiarism in student papers, but the rules about...
Implications of Recent Research on Student Evaluation of Teaching, Montana Law Professor (2006)
This article discusses recent research about student evaluations of professors (sometimes called "student ratings.") Recent...
First Amendment, Establishment Clause
God and Caesar in the Twenty-First Century: What Recent Cases Say about Church-State Relations in England and the United States (with Chloe J. Wallace), Florida International Law Journal (2006)
This article analyzes current jurisprudence concerning the relationship of church and state in the U.S....
Women's Reproductive Issues
Misappropriation of Human Eggs and Embryos and the Tort of Conversion: A Relational View, Loyola of Los Angeles Law review (1999)
Based on an analysis of the Irvine fertility scandal and other fertility cases, this article...
Walling Claims In or Out: Misappropriation of Human Gametic Material and the Tort of Conversion, Texas Journal of Women & Law (1999)
This article discusses fraudulent consent to sexual intercourse as a defense to paying child support....
Women in Law School
Portia Unbound: The Effects of a Supportive Law School Environment on Women and Minority Students, UCLA Women's Law Journal (1996)
This article compares students at a new law school in the spring of 1996 with...
Age Discrimination in Employment
Public Policy and the Tyranny of the Bottom Line in the Termination of Older Workers, South Carolina Law Review (2002)
This article discusses whether termination of an older worker in order to hire a younger...