Photo: Barbara Blumenfeld

Barbara Blumenfeld

Professor Emerita

Education

  • B.A. 1971
  • J.D. 1980, Wayne State University
  • Member of the Michigan and New Mexico Bars

Contact Information

 

Profile

Barbara Blumenfeld joined the UNM law faculty in 1995 to lead the school's legal writing program. As director, she designs materials for the first-year Legal Reasoning, Research and Writing and Advocacy courses. She established the New Mexico Court of Appeals Annual Appellate Advocacy Tournament for first-year students. Judges for the competition include members of the New Mexico Court of Appeals.

Before retiring in July, 2013, Blumenfeld also helped second- and third-year students prepare and write research papers. She diagnosed student writing problems and designed special programs and worked with students who needed remedial assistance in that area. From 1996 - 2003, she served as director of the law school's Pre-Enrollment Preparatory Program and developed the curriculum for the summer program. She has also taught in the PLSI Program.

In her teaching, Blumenfeld builds methodically on the basics, with the goal that at the end of the first year, students will have the writing skills necessary to successfully perform in summer clerkship jobs. She concentrates on thinking and reasoning skills, with the belief that good writing naturally flows from good thinking. She also encourages students to become self-critical writers and retain their own writing style within the confinements of composing a legal document.

Blumenfeld came to the UNM law school from Wayne State University Law School where, for eight years, she taught basic and advanced legal writing and analysis. She also designed many teaching materials that are now used by a number of other law schools.

Her interest in legal writing began as a law student at Wayne State University, where she was associate editor of the Wayne Law Review, and continued into a five-year practice focusing on trial and appellate work. She then joined the faculty at her alma mater.

The Electronic Authors Press honored her with an award for innovative teaching materials in the legal writing field.

Courses

Previously Taught

  • Advanced Legal Writing (Persuasive Writing)
  • Advocacy
  • Argumentative and Persuasive Writing
  • Legal Reasoning, Research, and Writing (LRRW)

Publications

Books

Basics Plus: A Legal Argumentation Exemplar (2015).
Available at: UNM-DR

Basics of Legal Argumentation and Its Expression (2014).
Available at: UNM-DR

Materials for PLSI Advocacy (Textbook).

Legal Research, Reasoning, Writing (Textbook)(2000).

Advocacy (Textbook) (1999).

Articles

Rhetoric, Referential Communication, and the Novice Writer, 9 LEGAL COMM. & RHETORIC: JALWD 207, Fall 2012.
Available at: UNM-DR

Can Havruta Style Learning Be a Best Practice in Law School?, 18 WILLAMETTE J. INT'L L. & Disp. Resol. 109 (2010).
Available at: UNM-DR

Integrating Indian Law into a First Year Legal Writing Course, 37 TULSA L. REV. 503 (Winter 2001).
Available at: UNM-DR

A Photographer's Guide to Legal Writing, PERSPECTIVES (January 1996).
Available at: UNM-DR

Constitutional Law: Freedom of the Press & A Reporter's Ability to Gather News, 26 WAYNE L. REV. 75 (1979).
Available at: UNM-DR

Workers' Compensation Insurance Carrier as Third Party Tortfeasor, 25 WAYNE L. REV. 1165 (1979).
Available at: UNM-DR

Bar & Trade Publications

Teaching Thinking and the Legal Creative Process, 18.1 THE L. TEACHER (Fall 2011).
Available at: UNM-DR

Legal Writing is a Creative Endeavor, 6.3 N.M. LAW. 8-11 (August 2011).

Why IRAC Should Be IGPAC, 10 THE SECOND DRAFT (November 1995).
Available at: UNM-DR

Write On! A Column on Legal Writing for the Practitioner, N.M. VERDICT (1995-1996) (monthly column).

Presentations

Engaging Students With Havruta Style Learning, Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, Summer Conference on Engaging and Assessing Students (June 2011).

Using a Montana Problem as a Basis for Writing Assignments - Materials for Panel Discussion, Teaching the Third Sovereign: How and Why to Include Tribal Nations and Courts in Legal Writing Courses, 14th Biennial Conference of the Legal Writing Institute 2010 Biennial Conference (June, 2010).

An Alternate Approach to Case Briefing - A System of Becauses, Ninth Annual Rocky Mountain Legal Writing conference, Tempe, Arizona (March 2009).

An Introduction to Fact-Based Legal Analysis And Its Use In Preparing for Trial; The Theory of the Case and the Trial Notebook, Curso De Capacitación Para Capacitadores 1ERConsurso Nacional De Juicios Orales (Training for Trainers, First National Oral Trial Competition) Mexico City, Mexico (January 2005).

The Three Rs of Revision, Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference, Phoenix, AZ (March 2002).

Panel Member, Incorporating Indian Law Into Other Law School Courses, AALS Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (Jan. 4, 2002).

Using IGPAC instead of IRAC as an Organizational Tool, Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference (March 2001).

Awards

Flickinger Award for Faculty Excellence

News