Legal Commentary

Another reason why lawyers write excruciatingly long sentences

By Ernie the Attorney

There are so many reasons why lawyers write those tedious run-on sentences, but let's focus on one that probably afflicts my generation more than the more newly minted lawyers.  How many people regularly use the 'Digests'?  You know, the headnotes maintained by West that are filled with blurbs about legal principles.

Anyway, I'm at the Fifth Circuit law library (availing myself of their West books, and the free wifi), and I was reminded of something about the digests that's really strange.  The digests have a convention about how they're written that encourages lawyers to write long-winded sentences. 

Can anyone guess what it is?  I'll let the comments roll in and we'll see who guesses right first.  The winner will get an invite to Google wave.

Full post as published by Ernie the Attorney on November 18, 2009 (boomark / email).