Widener’s Legal Methods professors were a strong presence at the Legal Writing Institute’s (LWI) Fifteenth Biennial Conference this summer.  LWI is a non-profit organization dedicated to the improvement of legal writing.   With over three thousand members from thirty-eight different countries, LWI is the second-largest organization of legal educators.Professors from both the Delaware and Harrisburg campuses presented innovative ideas at the LWI 2012 conference.  On the forefront of assessment, Dionne Anthon demonstrated her enhanced electronic rubric in “This Is Not Your Mother’s Rubric: An Enhanced ‘Electronic’ Rubric to Facilitate Faster Feedback, Track Students’ Overall Performance, and Discover Students’ Strengths and Weaknesses.”  Maryann Brown and Alice Eakin provided suggestions for how to incorporate metacognitive principles into the legal writing curriculum in the poster presentation “Wake Up Little Susie: Learning How to Learn in the Legal Writing Classroom.”  Anna Hemingway led a panel discussion on novel approaches to scholarship entitled “Not Your Average Cup of Joe: Exploring Scholarship Ideas Beyond the Traditional Law Review.”  Several Widener Law professors also presented on how educators could improve their teaching.  Iva Ferrell and Susan King explored how to discover new teaching ideas in a poster presentation entitled “Lessons Learned Along the Way: Teaching Strategies From Unexpected Places.”  Jennifer Lear encouraged professors to use writing terms familiar to students in her presentation “’Can You Hear Me Now?’ – Speaking a Familiar Language to Improve Student Learning.”  Amanda Smith suggested a change to the standard legal writing curriculum in “Preparing for Practice from Behind the Bench: Replacing the Traditional Office Memorandum with a Judicial Opinion.”The LWI conference was held in Palm Desert, California, from May 29 to June 1, 2012.  Approximately six hundred individuals from law schools all across the country attended.