Legal Writing

Today’s Good Advice (to Attorneys who Write)

Before you start writing that client alert, grab a newspaper and a cup of coffee.

If you can, get a widely read paper: The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Chicago Tribune. If not, find a paper that carries AP stories.

Read a few stories. At least, read the first few paragraphs of a few stories.

Now, here’s my good advice: when you write your alert, write like a journalist.

You’ll be glad you did.

If you write like a journalist, then we can say this about your alert:

1. The first sentence does three things: 1) it tells us what the alert’s about, 2) it speaks directly to us, the target audience, and 3) it inspires us to read the next sentence.
2. The first paragraph gives us the big picture, without lots of details. The details are in the body of the alert ? not the intro.
3. The paragraphs are short, and well structured.
4. The alert doesn’t bother to tell us what we already know. If readers of The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Chicago Tribune don’t need to be told what is the EPA, or the IRS, or the SEC, then neither do those who read your alert.
5. Your alert is well received and portrays you not only as someone who knows his subject matter, but someone who chews with his mouth closed.

Do that, or continue being verbose; go ahead and use awkward constructions that are hard to parse, waste readers’ time, make readers dig for details, and — most importantly — just paraphrase the ruling or whatever your alert’s about. That way, your readers are better off going to the EPA or the IRS or the SEC and getting the information (when it’s fresh) right from the source.

And, that way, you won’t have to spend too much of your time writing an alert (about old news) that you can’t bill anyone for.

Full post as published by Set in Style on January 13, 2010 (boomark / email).