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Litigation

: The Illinois Trial Practice Blog

Legal Writing in Crisis?

By Evan Schaeffer

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At Legal Blog Watch, Carolyn Elefant blames the deterioration in legal-writing abilities on the ubiquity of low-cost legal research tools--

While I believe that both factors --the informality of e-mail and lack of quality teaching -- have contributed to the decline of legal writing skills today, I think the main problem is the easy availability of low-cost, computerized legal research tools. These days, both students and lawyers can gorge on a glut of cheap reference sources, from today's less expensive LexisNexis and Westlaw, to tools like Casemaker or Versuslaw, to Google and other Internet search engines. Consequently, legal research has devolved into an exercise in "piling on", with lawyers adding cases and quotes merely to show strength through quantity of cases rather than quality.

The cure for this problem is easy enough: cut out the string cites. Although it's a tip you've probably heard before, it's one that's easily forgotten.

Meanwhile, as my own modest contribution to improving legal writing, I offer the posts from this weblog's legal writing category, including these--

1. "Self-Editing Tips for Legal Writers."

2. "Legal Writing: Some Free Advice."

3. "Six Posts About Better Writing."

4. "Reminder: Omit Needless Words."

5. "A Writing Tip that Pays Dividends in Reader Comprehension."

6. "Legal Writing Tip: Begin First Drafts in the Middle."

7. "An Easy Tip to Make Your Writing Look More Professional."

8. "I Don't Speak Latin, and Neither Do You."

9. "How to Easily Counter Your Opponent's Brief-Writing Venom."

10. "Legal Writing: Is Shorter Really Better?"

Full post as published by The Illinois Trial Practice Blog on October 30, 2008 (boomark / email).