For legal writing content that’s a little more challenging than the articles in Thomson West’s Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing, check out the Legal Writing Journal over at the Social Science Research Network. (To find this specific journal, go to http://www.ssrn.com/lsn/index.html and click on “subject matter journals” in the left sidebar). Like Perspectives, the Legal Writing Journal is absolutely free.

As a subscriber to the Legal Writing Journal, you’ll receive an e-mail every so often with short abstracts of the newest articles. Whether or not you subscribe, you can browse or search the archives, which currently contain 90 articles.

Some of my favorite articles include Homer Simpson Meets the Rule Against Perpetuities: The Controversial Use of Pop-Culture in Legal Writing Pedagogy and [Insert Song Lyrics Here]: The Uses and Misuses of Popular Music Lyrics In Legal Writing. Next up on my reading list: The Lexicon Has Become a Fortress: The United States Supreme Court’s Use of Dictionaries . I’m sure the authors’ appendix of terms defined by the United States Supreme Court will come in handy someday.