Serious ramifications come with plagiarism, which could include expulsion from a college, exclusion from taking the bar exam, or larger implications. Yet, Professor Lurene Contento realizes that not all students know how to avoid plagiarizing.
Contento, director of the Writing Resource Center at The John Marshall Law School, was awarded the Deborah Hecht Memorial Writing Contest Award for 2012 for her article, “Freeing Students to Write More Effectively – Taking the Fear Out of Plagiarism.”
The article encourages legal education professionals to discuss with their students what plagiarism is and how to write properly-cited papers.
“It’s a confusing topic for a lot of people,” Contento said. Her interest in plagiarism began approximately seven years ago, when she was asked to create a workshop for international students—some of whom may have come to the U.S. with a different understanding of plagiarism. “The more research I did, the more interested I became in the subject.”
Contento has presented on the topic and has contributed articles to Turkish and Russian law journals. “Freeing Students to Write More Effectively – Taking the Fear Out of Plagiarism” was written as a commission for The Second Draft, The Legal Writing Institute’s newsletter.
The Deborah Hecht Memorial Writing Contest Award will be given to Contento at the 15th Biennial Conference of The Legal Writing Institute in Palm Desert, Calif., in late May.
“I’ll be honored to have the award presented in front of my peers,” Contento said.
Since joining the writing center staff in 2002, she has counseled more than 1,500 students in individual appointments. In her role as Writing Resource Center director, she counsels John Marshall students from 1Ls to international LLM students, presents workshops on legal writing topics ranging from basic grammar to persuasive techniques and supervises a staff of professional writing advisors.
She also teaches Lawyering Skills I, a first-semester legal skills course, and Writing for the Practice of Law, an upper-level writing class designed to help students prepare for practice and the bar.
Contento is a 2000 magna cum laude graduate of The John Marshall Law School.