EAST LANSING A third-year Michigan State University College of Law student is among the 2005 law school winners of the prestigious 2005 Burton Awards for Legal Achievement.
Joseph J. Gavin, who will graduate from MSU College of Law on May 15, 2005, received the Burton Award in recognition of his outstanding legal writing.
MSU Law dean Terence L. Blackburn nominated Gavin’s Michigan State Law Review article, “The Subtle Birth of Activism: the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure,” for the award.
“The entire law college is extremely proud of Mr. Gavin and his accomplishment,” said Blackburn said“His work was recognized in the same league with articles written by students from Columbia University School of Law, Duke University School of Law, Stanford University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Michigan Law School.”
The Burton Awards for Legal Achievement is a unique national awards program dedicated to rewarding effective legal writing. The program honors law school students and partners in law firms who use plain, clear and concise language in their legal writing while avoiding archaic, stilted legalese. LexisNexis® is the prime sponsor of the program, which is run in association with the Library of Congress Law Library.
MSU law professor Adam Mossoff, a faculty adviser to the Law Review, recommended Gavin’s article for nomination. “His article is one of the best examples of student writing that I have ever read,” Mossoff said. “He exhibited a clear, professional writing style that is on par with most articles written by full-time law professors.”
The awards program is named for William C. Burton, a partner in the international law firm of D’Amato & Lynch. He also is a former New York State assistant attorney general and the author of the authoritative reference, Burton’s Legal Thesaurus.Burton is an outspoken advocate of plain language and modernized legal writing.
In his letter to the dean announcing Gavin’s award, Burton stated, “Participants from every geographic region of the nation competed in record numbers. Only 15 award winners were selected out of the mass of applications received. It is, therefore, a great tribute that your student won.”
Gavin will receive his award at a June 6, 2005, banquet to be held in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Chris Matthews, host of “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and frequent commentator of “NBC’s Today Show,” will be the guest speaker at the event.
MSU College of Law was founded as the Detroit College of Law in 1891. To extend its commitment to educational excellence, the college affiliated with Michigan State University (MSU) in 1995 and moved to MSU’s East Lansing campus in 1997. The move enabled the law college to build state-of-the-art facilities and to provide the benefits of a Big Ten campus.
MSU College of Law strengthened its affiliation with MSU in 2004, becoming more closely aligned academically. The association between the two schools has led to a comprehensive interdisciplinary legal education program at the law college. Today, the college is one of only two private law schools to be affiliated with a research university and one of the oldest continuously operating independent law colleges in the nation.