This writing workshop is offered exclusively to researchers in the Max Planck Law network by Jeremiah Hendren, an experienced writing coach with a long track record of working for the Planck Academy. The workshop will focus on the types of writing used in legal academia and draw on examples and writing samples from the discipline.
The key themes of the workshop are style, process, and narrative. Style refers to writing techniques that allow readers to understand ideas in an efficient and painless way. Process concerns strategies to make everyday research and writing as productive and enjoyable as possible. Narrative is about drawing readers in and sustaining their interest throughout a text.
Participants will learn writing and research skills through methodical, replicable steps. They work with ‘models’ that they can freely emulate in their own writing, because they are drawn from the participants’ own disciplines. Guided peer workshopping allows participants to apply the principles learned through giving and receiving feedback on their current writing.
The workshop combines brief lectures, group discussions, writing and editing exercises, and text-workshopping sessions—during which the instructor can also give a bit of individual feedback. Participants will also receive handouts, suggested readings, and additional advice on resources to further improve their writing on their own. Finally, every workshop includes two virtual ‘office hours’ in the subsequent week, in which participants can discuss their own texts or outstanding questions with the instructor.
The workshop will be held online over four mornings (9.00–14.30) from Monday 24 March to Thursday 27 March 2025.
The maximum number of participants is 20. Places will be allocated on a first come—first served basis.
Prerequisites: Participants should have already written some sort of academic text in English. This could be a journal article (or draft), a master’s thesis, a research proposal, etc. This is a prerequisite because the course will emphasize peer workshopping of participants’ actual writing.
Learning objectives:
Writing Style
- Write sentences that help your reader understand quickly and effortlessly
- Stick sentences together in a way that gets your reader into a flow
- Cut needless words
- Employ field jargon in a way that every reader can still follow
Writing Process
- Use writing as a tool for thinking, organization, and creativity
- Break through writer’s block to make every workday fulfilling
- Use writing to read more quickly and remember the content
- Apply digital tools in a helpful yet ethical way (eg, ChatGPT)
]Narrative
- Tell your whole story in a few hundred words (abstracts)
- Pull the reader in to care about your work the way you do (introductions)
- Take a clear stance in a scholarly conversation (literature reviews)
- Breathe life into your text through storytelling and literary techniques
To register via the LMS link, you should first make sure you are logged into the MAX system. Researchers struggling to register may contact the research coordinator, Dr Niels Petersson at petersson@law.mpg.de.