Litigation
Cal. Litig. 2014, Volume 27, Number 1
Content
- Adr Update: Can Post-Award Searches Vacate Arbitration Awards?
- Another Amazing Year in the Supreme Court
- Can Use of Administrative Procedures Expedite Complex State Court Civil Litigation?
- Can We Shorten This Trial?
- Editor's Foreword Signing On: Big Shoes to Fill
- From the Section Chair
- Hypotheticals on Litigational Plagiarism:
- "I Learned About Litigating from That" In Memory of Joel a. Cohen
- Litigation Section Executive Committee Past Chairs
- Masthead
- McDermott On Demand: Ozymandias?
- Past Editors-in-Chief
- Plagiarism: Naughty, Knotty
- Statements of Decision: Errors, Omissions, and Solutions
- Table of Contents
- The Perils of Punishing Public Employees for Protected Speech: Applying Pickering v. Board of Education to Posts and Pins
- Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame (2004): 62 Years in the Practice of Law
- Officers of a Court Do Not Plagiarize
Officers of a Court Do Not Plagiarize
By Elliot L. Bien
Elliot L. Bien
To my great surprise, this State Bar journal recently published an argument that plagiarism is generally acceptable in lawyers’ submissions to a court. (Shatz & McGrath, Beg, Borrow, Steal: Plagiarism vs. Copying in Legal Writing (Winter 2013) 26:3 Cal.Litig. 14.) The authors reason that "a litigator’s job is to prevail….Pleadings and legal briefs serve practical, not academic or artistic, purposes." (Id. at p. 14.) "Plagiarism is rightfully a mortal sin in academic settings, where original expression is paramount. Litigation is different, with far more room for borrowing ideas and writings." (Id. at p. 18.)
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