Legal Writing

Absurd Opinion Baffles Millions

Eric Turkewitz, a New York attorney who operates a personal injury law firm in midtown Manhattan and who is the proprietor of the oddly named (but soon to be renamed) New York Personal Injury Law Blog, a blog known to insiders as Turk’s Place, wrote in his first blog post:

Too many attorneys not only write in a stilted and pretentious manner, filled with arcane Latin phrases, but also do so in convoluted run-on sentences.

The Turk recently alerted us to an opinion (Dockery v. Sprecher) from the Second Department of New York’s Appellate Division.

Here’s the first sentence of the opinion:

When applicants for U.S. citizenship were given a test in which they had to fully diagram this sentence, many were stumped; others were lost; most decided to pack up and go home.

Full post as published by Set in Style on March 22, 2010 (boomark / email).