Legal Writing

New blog URL

Posted on August 15, 2008
This blog has moved. Point your browser or syndicator/reader tohttp://blog.legalwriting.net/Thanks.

This blog is moving

Posted on August 11, 2008
Wayne Schiess's legal writing blog @ Legalwriting.net is moving to a new URL:http://blog.legalwriting.net/Please point your browser to the new location or update your syndicator.Thank you.

A blog of note

Posted on August 05, 2008
You might enjoy this blog:Contract Lawyering Made EasyIn particular, check out the posts on legal writing.

Wayne Schiess's blog is moving

Posted on August 05, 2008
Wayne Schiess's legal writing blog @ Legalwriting.net is moving to a new URL:http://blog.legalwriting.net/Please point your browser to the new location or update your syndicator. Thank you.Sorry for the inconvenience. This new blog has more features and is no longer hosted on the University's server.

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Teaching Fellows as legal-writing teachers

Posted on July 31, 2008
At the (new) legal writer, Raymond Ward posted about law schools that use aspiring young legal scholars to teach legal writing. I posted the following comment.Yes, a few law schools still do this. It is not so much an initiation for the fellows to pass through...

Citation percolation

Posted on July 30, 2008
The citation discussion has percolated nicely, with lots of good comments. Before I chime in with my take, I'd like to ask a question:In judicial opinions, the citation form is almost always wrong. Why?Because judges often have their own idiosyncratic preferences that do not match the current Bluebook?Because judges and their clerks are only human and are no better than the practicing bar at citation form?Because the publishers of judicial opinions alter the form before we see it?Why? Send your answers to me or post a comment.

Role of citations in legal writing--responses

Posted on July 24, 2008
The student essay about citations and their importance or lack of importance prompted three thoughtful responses:Commenter #1:This is a great essay and it perfectly illustrates what you've called the "tyranny of the inconsequential." But looking at the other side of the issue, though, the lesson here is that legal employers have high standards for substance and form...

The best legal-writing sources--a series #3

Posted on July 24, 2008
Your indoctrination into the movement for plain legal writing could begin here:Lifting the Fog of Legalese: Essays on Plain Language by Joseph KimbleProfessor Kimble is the foremost expert on plain legal writing in the United States, and this book collects his best writing...

Student essay--role of citations in legal writing

Posted on July 24, 2008
?I don't even know where my Bluebook is,? the young associate told me as she looked over the sea of red ink on the motion she had asked me to ?proofread.? ?Really?? I asked, quite perplexed as I tried to cover up my carefully tabbed and slightly tattered Bluebook...

Guest blogger--Cheryl Stephens

Posted on July 24, 2008
Cheryl Stephens, of Building Rapport, the plain language blog, is a leader in the field of plain language communication, and provides training and workshops to clients all over North America. She is making a guest appearance today promoting her new book, Plain Language Legal Writing...

All comments will be moderated

Posted on July 23, 2008
As some of you are realizing, I have changed the settings for this blog so that all comments must be moderated before they can be posted. I had to do this because of the high volume of "comment spam" I was getting. This site is hosted on a university server, and the computer people insisted that I find a way to cut down the spam...

Underlining: a postscript

Posted on July 23, 2008
A reader adds:One thing to consider (and I find this reason compelling) is that a lot of text is being published on the Internet. Underlining text on Web pages is always a no-no since underlining signifies a hyperlink. When documents are published on the Internet (which they almost always are these days), existing underlined words will only cause confusion since they are not hyperlinks...

In favor of the serial comma

Posted on July 23, 2008
I favor using a full complement of serial commas:The flag is red, white, and blue.I put a comma before the conjunction in a series of three or more items. I haven't found any legal-writing source that says you can omit that comma. And I haven't yet been persuaded that including that comma ever causes a problem, though some have tried to persuade me...

In defense of underlining

Posted on July 23, 2008
A reader writes:Regarding the emphasis of words as a matter of document design, what?s so bad about underlining? Surely the fact that underlining happened to be possible with a typewriter does not by itself warrant exile to realm of ?witnesseth? and all caps...

Response: problems with collaboration in law school

Posted on July 22, 2008
A practicing lawyer has responded to the student essay about collaboration:My worst experiences in law school and in college involved group projects. There is always someone who does not pull their weight. Or worse, someone who drops a class rather than pull their weight for the group...

The best sources on legal writing--a series #2

Posted on July 22, 2008
I recommend A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage by Bryan A. Garner.Garner needs no introduction to those who read this blog. But this book, one of his first, may still not be on your shelf. It should be. I state it rather categorically: if you are serious about legal writing, you must have this book...

Student essay--law school should simulate law-practice collaboration

Posted on July 22, 2008
In this essay, one of my students writes about a truth we all know but that is hard to accommodate in an academic setting:In this essay I will argue that the final graded assignments in the first-year legal writing courses should be group projects, rather than individual assignments...

The best sources on legal writing--a series

Posted on July 21, 2008
This is, if not the best, certainly one of the best books on legal writing:The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well by Goldstein and LiebermanIt changed the way I think about lawyers as writers. It made me realize that lawyers are professional writers and that as a professional writer, I should take the craft of writing more seriously...

More on document design

Posted on July 21, 2008
You can read more on document design in chapter 3 of my book, Better Legal Writing, and in this excellent article:Ruth Anne Robbins, Painting with Print: Incorporating Concepts of Typographic and Layout Design into the Text of Legal Writing Documents, 2 J...

Schiess's basic document design for lawyers

Posted on July 18, 2008
Schiess's basic document design for lawyersMain textUse a serifed font for the main text of your document. Serifed fonts look more professional and are easier to read when printed on paper. I like Constantia, Georgia, and Century Schoolbook. This blog is in Georgia...

What first-year LRLW can do

Posted on July 16, 2008
The first-year legal-writing course on objective legal analysis (memos) can teach students--How to determine the issue raised in a legal problem and express that issue effectively in writing. How to determine the legally and contextually relevant facts of a legal problem and express them effectively in writing...

What the first-year LRLW course can can't do

Posted on July 16, 2008
Every lawyer, law professor, and legal-writing teacher should read Douglas Laycock's article:Douglas Laycock, Why the First-year Legal-writing Course Cannot Do Much about Bad Legal Writing, 1 Scribes J. of Legal Writing 83 (1990).His point: when lawyers complain about poor writing by young lawyers, they are usually referring to style, rhetorical force, and essentials of grammar and punctuation; but the first-year legal-writing course does not teach those things at all or very much--and can't...

Another new book

Posted on July 02, 2008
I'm pleased to announce that my fourth book will be out this fall:Preparing Legal Documents Nonlawyers Can Read and Understand (ABA 2008)is my attempt to explain how to convert legalese into plain English and why you should do it.

My new book: The Legal Memo

Posted on July 01, 2008
I'm pleased to announce that my latest book will be out this summer and available for my students this fall:The Legal Memo: A Basic Guide (Kendall Hunt 2008)is my attempt to put into a readable and practical text everything I know about basic legal memos...

Hyphenate phrasal adjectives

Posted on June 18, 2008
This needs a hyphen:excessive fee litigationDoes this mean that fee litigation is excessive? Or does it mean that the litigation is about excessive fees? As written, it means the first, but the writer intended it to mean the second. Here's how it should have been punctuated:excessive-fee litigationLawyers don't hyphenate their phrasal adjectives enough...

My mom was an English teacher

Posted on June 13, 2008
"My mom [or dad] was an English teacher, so . . ."If you are a lawyer, especially a lawyer who is serious about legal writing, and especially a lawyer who teaches legal writing, this is a cool thing to be able to say. You don't even need to complete the thought...

"I'm a real nitpicker"

Posted on June 10, 2008
The senior partner asked me to have the agreed order retyped, verbatim, in our firm's preferred format. Opposing counsel had sent over an agreed order, and we were fine with its wording. But the senior partner wanted it to look like our document. "Have it retyped and then take it over to opposing counsel for his signature," he told me...

No typos? Ever?

Posted on June 09, 2008
A former student sent me this comment, carried in a major newspaper, from a senior partner at a law firm:Do not ever for the second time give your senior a piece of writing with a typo or a grammatical mistake. I will take it once and I will tell the junior my set speech...

Is the up-front conclusion always best?

Posted on June 05, 2008
At a recent seminar, I was preaching, as usual, about beginning legal documents with some kind of up-front conclusion. I mentioned legal advice and legal opinions in particular. Don't start with background, I said, and then build up to the conclusion--the answer...

Ten legal words and phrases we can do without

Posted on June 02, 2008
Ten legal words and phrases we can do withoutAustin Lawyer, May 2008Part of becoming a lawyer is mastering legal vocabulary, be it archaic, fancy, or Latin. It's an important part of what law students and novice legal writers have to learn. But part of becoming an expert legal writer is shedding the archaic, the fancy, and the Latin...

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