Kirsten K. Davis

Professor of Law, Faculty Director of Online Legal Education Strategies

B.A., The Ohio State University
J.D., Michael E. Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University
Ph.D., Arizona State University, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication

Phone: 727-562-7877
Email: [email protected]
Office: CR-208 (Gulfport)

Courses
Professional Responsibility, Legal Research and Writing I & II, The First Amendment, Legal Discourse and Rhetorical Theory, and Legal Writing with Generative AI

Publications

Kirsten K. Davis

Biography

Dr. Davis is a native Ohioan and a farm kid. She graduated summa cum laude and Order of the Coif from The Ohio State University College of Law. While at Ohio State, she was a member of the Ohio State Law Journal and chief justice of the Moot Court Governing Board.

Dr. Davis is a native Ohioan and a farm kid. She graduated summa cum laude and Order of the Coif from The Ohio State University College of Law. While at Ohio State, she was a member of the Ohio State Law Journal and chief justice of the Moot Court Governing Board.

Dr. Davis began her legal career as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Frederick P. Stamp, Jr., judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. She later practiced in the areas of litigation, employment, and taxation. Dr. Davis began her academic career at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University where she taught for seven years before she came to Stetson Law in 2007.

Dr. Davis holds a Ph.D. in Human Communication from the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. She has served on the board of directors of the Association of Legal Writing Directors and the Legal Writing Institute.   She is a past chair for the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education and its Annual Meeting Program Committee. She is also a past Chair of the Florida Bar's Standing Commission on Professionalism and served on its Special Committee to Review Professionalism.

Dr. Davis's research and scholarship focuses on legal communication, law and rhetoric, professionalism, professional identity, and professional ethics. She is currently working on issues at the intersection of generative artificial intelligence, legal education, and legal practice.  She founded Stetson’s Institute for the Advancement of Legal Communication, a collective of Stetson faculty whose work addresses the pressing issues of effective and persuasive legal communication.  More recently, she founded and facilitates the Legal Writing and Generative AI Convo Group, a group of more than 300 law school faculty explore issues of Generative AI and teaching legal writing in law schools.

Her work has appeared in journals including the University of Nevada Law Review, Oregon Law Review, Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, and William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law.  She blogs on the Appellate Advocacy Blog on law and rhetoric topics. Davis designs and delivers continuing legal education and training in effective and persuasive legal and business communication.

Featured Publications

[Classical] Lawyers As [Digital] Public Speakers: Classical Rhetoric and Lawyer Digital Public Commentary

This article explores the problems and possibilities of lawyers’ digital rhetoric. The article is not a handbook of rhetorical techniques; rather it offers lawyers a rhetorical perspective on public commentary in a digital environment.

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Rhetorical Criticism as Essential Legal Skill: Some Thoughts on Developing Lawyers as 'Public Citizens'

This article argues that teaching rhetorical criticism skills in law school can play a central part in giving lawyers the intellectual skills to perform their roles as fiduciaries of the rule of law and participatory democracy and to understand themselves as moral actors in the public sphere.

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Additional publications are available on SSRN.