Legal Research

"Why Do Law Firms Need Editors?"

From the blog: "There's this attorney from China and he's flying to San Francisco, hoping to start a good relationship. He works for a large telecommunications company that's planning its first venture in the U.S., and he's looking for a law firm to provide guidance in several regulatory matters.

He's several hours into the flight when he takes this article out of his briefcase. He's going to meet the author, an attorney at a law firm in San Francisco that also has an office in Beijing; the article should be great background.

Take a look at the article (it's a PDF file). If you're pressed for time, just read the first line.

Our flying attorney begins reading the article, which offers advice to Chinese firms doing business in the U.S. But as soon as he starts, he stops. He wonders, what is repaid economic growth? What is that?

As he reads the article, his generally favorable impression of the author -- formed during a phone call a week earlier -- starts to fade. There are so many careless errors. The author didn't mean repaid economic growth; he meant rapid economic growth. He wrote about Ebay, but he meant eBay. He quoted a figure of $750,000,000, rather than the correct figure: $175,000,000.

This is the flying attorney's second impression of the author, and it's not a good one. He wonders, who would write something like this?

What sort of law firm would publish this?

...

It's the sort of firm that lets a half-billion dollar error go unnoticed!

Had there been an editor between the attorney and the printing press, this would not have happened. Instead the article would have been transformed into this revised article.

The author would have looked good, the firm would have looked good, and the meeting that had been planned would not have been cancelled.

Note: Click here for a Microsoft Word document that shows exactly which changes I made to the article."

The full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Set in Style, 23 July 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on July 28, 2009 (boomark / email).