Teresa Kissane Brostoff

Teresa Brostoff is Professor and Director of Legal Writing.  She researches, writes and lectures on legal writing methodology and pedagogy.  She teaches Legal Writing to first year students and Advanced Legal Writing to upper level students.  She also works with Pitt’s MSL students and teaches their core course, Introduction to Law and Legal Reasoning.  Professor Brostoff has also taught Legal Writing during four CLEO Institutes hosted at Pitt Law.

Professor Brostoff created, with her colleague Ann Sinsheimer, the English for Lawyers Program for which they co-authored the text Legal English, which is now in its second edition and is published by Oceana Publications, a division of Oxford University Press.  She teaches this law school preparation course each July at the University of Pittsburgh to a class of international lawyers, many of whom go on to LL.M. or S.J.D. programs around the country.  She has written and lectured on methods of teaching international students.  In addition, Professor Brostoff has taught English for Lawyers in Belgrade, Serbia, Donetsk and Kiev, Ukraine and Pristina, Kosovo under State Department auspices, in Reykjavik, Iceland as a distinguished Fulbright Scholar, in Tokyo, Japan, Lodz, Poland, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia as an invited lecturer, in Ghent, Belgium as a Fulbright Senior Specialist and member of the EU LL.M. faculty, and in Manama, Bahrain under Department of Commerce sponsorship.  She also has recently been appointed to the Fulbright Peer Review Selection Committee in Law.

Prior to joining the Pitt Law faculty, Professor Brostoff clerked for the Honorable Justin M. Johnson on the Pennsylvania Superior Court.  She is also a registered nurse.

Selected Publications

Books:

• Teresa Kissane Brostoff & Ann Sinsheimer, Legal English: An Introduction To The Legal Language and Culture of the United States (Oceana Publications 2000).
• Teresa Kissane Brostoff, Using Negotiation to Improve Thinking and Writing in the First Year in Teaching the Law School Curriculum (Steven I. Freedland & Gerald F. Hess eds., 2004).

Articles:

• Teresa Kissane Brostoff, Using Culture in the Classroom: Enhancing Learning for International Students, 15 Michigan State Journal of International Law 557 (2007).
• Teresa Kissane Brostoff, A Glimmer of Insight in 20 The Second Draft 10 (August 2005).
• Teresa Kissane Brostoff & Ann Sinsheimer, English for Lawyers: A Preparatory Course for International Lawyers, 7 Legal Writing: Journal of the Legal Writing Institute 137 (2001).