Legal Research

"Write Like the Best"

This post was written by Mister Thorne: "My experience is that many attorneys are dead wrong.

They think the best writing is what most people (including other attorneys) can't follow, so they turn out the sort of convoluted, long-winded constructions that make professional writers wince, like this nonsense...

My experience is that the clerks and judges who have to read what attorneys write don't appreciate convoluted, long-winded constructions. They value their time, and they don't like to waste it trying to determine if a sentence is well formed, or not...

Well . . . if you're an attorney and you think (or you've been taught to believe) that bad writing (e.g., way too much copy and awkwardly arranged) is good (e.g., worth hundreds of dollars per hour to generate), then read:

• Legal Writing in Plain English
• Legal Writing: Sense and Nonsense
• What Makes for Good Legal Writing
• Wordsmithing

Full text and active links are available by clicking on the author's name.

Source: Set in Style, 2 March 2010, reproduced with permission of the author

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on March 04, 2010 (boomark / email).