Labor & Employment Law

Be Brief but Never Short

By Michael Fitzgibbon

Dan Michaluk offers a post about the art of brevity in legal writing.  This goes hand in glove with my post A reminder about what we (lawyers) do.  Good legal writing is persuasive - bad or sloppy legal writing has the opposite effect. 

Some feel the need to go on and on in their legal writing, covering every point in excruciating detail forgetting that long winded and rambly writing loses the reader.  Get to the point as quickly as possible and let the strength of the argument persuade.  What is certain is that the number of words you use and the volume of paper that it takes to make a point will not win the case.  Crisp, tight, direct, to the point writing helps.  Lose, unfocused, verbose writing hurts by distracting the reader from what you're trying to say.

A really good non-law on writing is If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland and written in 1938. Dan has a number of references as well.  Thanks for this reminder Dan.

Full post as published by Thoughts from a Management Lawyer on September 02, 2009 (boomark / email).