“Plain and Precise Legal Prose”

Terri Mester, pre-law adviser, lecturer in English and adjunct professor of law, will lead a 90-minute workshop teaching students to apply plain language principles to the unique demands of legal writing. The session will intersperse lecturing with group discussion, starting with why Chaucer took Beowulf to court and why lawyers historically write the way they do. The discussion will then turn to putting people first as the subjects of sentences and to  substituting plain language for legalese. The session will take place Saturday, Oct. 27, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Bellflower Hall, Room 102. RSVP to writershouse@case.edu. Pizza will be served.

About Mester

Mester received her BA, MA and PhD in English from Case Western Reserve University. Since 2002, she has taught literature and film classes in the Department of English and SAGES program. In 2008, she joined Undergraduate Studies as the pre-law adviser. In 2012, Mester became an adjunct professor at the School of Law. She has been nominated several times for  teaching and advising awards. Mester also is the director of Workplace Writing, where she has conducted workshops in legal, business and technical writing since 1998. Her clients include several bar associations, prominent law firms, CPA firms and high-profile companies like Lubrizol, Nationwide Insurance and Abbott Laboratories. A writer herself, Mester has published numerous articles and reviews in scholarly journals, area newspapers and magazines on film, dance and literature. She is the author of Movement and Modernism, an interdisciplinary look at the arts at the turn of the last century.