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Joseph Kimble

Professor 
B.A. Amherst College 1967
J.D. University of Michigan 1972

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Professor Kimble was a staff attorney for the Michigan Supreme Court and the Michigan Court of Appeals. He later practiced law in Flint, Michigan, and was an adjunct professor at Thomas Cooley. He joined the full-time faculty in 1984.

He is the editor in chief of The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing and the longtime editor of the "Plain Language" column in the Michigan Bar Journal. He has published many articles on legal writing and research, has written a book called Lifting the Fog of Legalese: Essays on Plain Language, and has lectured on writing to legal organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. He served as a drafting consultant to the Sixth Circuit Committee on Pattern Jury Instructions and the Michigan Committee on Standard Criminal Jury Instructions. He now serves as the drafting consultant to the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He led the redrafting of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and is working on the Federal Rules of Evidence.

Professor Kimble is also the past president of the international organization Clarity, serves as the executive director of Scribes (the American Society of Legal Writers), is a founding director of the Center for Plain Language, and was on the board of the Legal Writing Institute. He is a Fellow of the State Bar of Michigan and a member of the State Bar's Publications Committee.

In 2000, he was named a "Plain English Champion" by the Plain English Campaign, in England. He is one of the first persons to receive that award. In 2007, he won the first Plain Language Association International Award for being a "champion leader and visionary in the international plain-language field." Also in 2007, he won a prestigious Burton Award for Reform in Law for his work on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Professor Kimble teaches Research & Writing and Advanced Research & Writing. He developed the original course for Introduction to Law I.

Bibliography

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This Page was last updated on: 03/23/2004