Joseph Kimble
Professor, Thomas Cooley Law School, USA
Joseph Kimble has taught legal writing and drafting for more than 25 years at Thomas Cooley Law School, in Lansing, Michigan.
He has written a book called Lifting the Fog of Legalese: Essays on Plain Language, published many articles on legal writing, and lectured throughout the United States and abroad. His acclaimed new book, Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please, collects empirical evidence about the benefits of plain language in business, government, and law. Joseph is the editor in chief of The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, the longtime editor of the ‘Plain Language’ column in the Michigan Bar Journal, a past president of Clarity, and a founding director of the Center for Plain Language in the United States.
Since 1999, he has been the drafting consultant on all federal court rules, and he led the work of redrafting the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Evidence.
He has received several national and international awards, including a 2007 and 2011 Burton Award for Reform in Law for his work on the federal rules, a 2007 award from the Plain Language Association International for his leadership in the field, and the 2010 award from the Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research of the Association of American Law Schools.