Jill Barton, Professor of Legal Writing and director of the Legal Communication and Research Skills (LComm) Program, was recently awarded an Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) teaching grant. Barton created 12 Grammar Redux Videos, each focused on a particular grammar or writing style topic that is geared to help the new legal writer. The videos introduce complex law concepts in an understandable, accessible format, empowering students with the knowledge they need before starting law school.
In addition to directing the LComm program, Barton teaches a course in Legal Communication and Research each semester. She is the author of So Ordered: The Writer’s Guide, and the co-author with Rachel H. Smith of The Handbook for the New Legal Writer, a comprehensive legal writing textbook for first-year law students. Prior to joining the Miami Law faculty, she clerked for Judge Leslie B. Rothenberg at Florida's Third District Court of Appeal.
Barton worked as a journalist for more than a decade, mostly for the Associated Press (AP) and other news organizations in Florida. As an AP correspondent, she regularly published news stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Miami Herald. She later received her M.S. in journalism from the University of Kansas, where she taught advanced reporting, and her J.D. summa cum laude from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
