Professor Carney is a co-founder and Co-Assistant Director of The Legal Writing Academy at Case Western Reserve School of Law. Prior to joining the faculty of CWRU Law School in 1999, Professor Carney practiced in the litigation group at Calfee, Halter & Griswold L.L.P., where he specialized in business litigation and municipal law. From 1998 to 2003, Professor Carney served on the Board of Education for the Cleveland Municipal School District, Ohio’s largest public school system. As an Associate Professor of Law, Professor Carney teaches Legal Writing and Analysis and focuses on writing, editing, analytical, and oral advocacy skills. He has been asked to present “plain language” workshops for young practitioners in the Cleveland area. He also teaches Evidence and Appellate Litigation to upper-class students at CWRU Law School.

Daniel Webster once said that a lawyer's greatest weapon is the "power of clear statement". Webster's phrase goes to the heart of my course. I teach my students that the best lawyers find ways to make even the murkiest phrase of a densely worded agreement clear and comprehensible. Legal problems with simple, easy answers are resolved quickly. Practicing lawyers spend most of their time dealing with questions that are neither easy nor clear. Lawyers win cases by finding a better way of explaining these complex and difficult issues in ways the judge, jury, and client can understand. With cases that deal with nuance and gray areas, the lawyer who does the better job explaining the issue usually triumphs. Too many lawyers surrender to the complexity of the issues they deal with, lapsing into the kind of legalistic gibberish that alienates clients, judges, and juries. My course in Research, Analysis and Writing teaches first year law students the art of effective lawyering by clear statement. Law students and lawyers must learn that their most brilliant insight is of no value if they are the only one who understands it. I am currently researching an article examining the Constitutionality of several state laws that attempt to regulate or eliminate junk e-mail (popularly known as "spam") on the Internet.