The Legal Writing Institute (LWI) is an American non-profit organization "dedicated to improving legal writing by providing a forum for discussion and scholarship about legal writing, analysis, and research." LWI maintains several resources for its members including a national conference held every two years, annual surveys, a database of teaching materials, and committee projects. The LWI also supports conferences in other countries and conferences in specialty topics such as rhetoric and legal storytelling.
The LWI is housed at Mercer University School of Law. Members include legal writing professors, attorneys, and judges from around the world.
The LWI was established as an offshoot of the first conference concerning Legal Writing in law schools held at the University of Puget Sound in 1984. The conference was partially funded by money left over from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant procured by Christopher Rideout, an English Professor at the University of Puget Sound. Laurel Currie Oates, who was a Professor of Legal Writing at the University of Puget Sound, helped organize this initial conference that 108 writing professionals attended. The concept of LWI reached fruition in 1985 when the Association of American Law Schools held a conference in Chicago and brought together numerous leaders in the legal writing field. The LWI was incorporated in 1986.