Legal Commentary

"So why is most business (and legal) writing so numbingly banal?"

By Patrick J. Lamb

That is the question posed by Jason Fried in What's Your Point?, an article in the May 2010 edition of Inc. Fried highlights some great banalities:

One of my favorite phrases in the business world is full service solutions provider ('full service law firm' anyone?). A quick search on Google finds at least 47,000 companies using that one. That's full service generic. There's more. Cost effective end-to-end solutions brings you about 95,000 results. Provider of value-added services nets you more than 600,000 matches.

He then asks the perfect question: 'Exactly which services are sold as not adding value?'

Why is this important? Fried provides the perfect answer:

When you write like everyone else and sound like everyone else and act like everyone else, you're saying ‘Our products are like everyone else's, too.' Or think of it this way: Would you go to a dinner party and just repeat what the person to the right of you is saying all night long? Would that be interesting to anybody? 

Fried provides some examples of companies that have avoided this sameness. Love them or hate them, but at least they make you have a feeling. I'll let you track them down. If you care about your website, your collateral writings, you should.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on May 19, 2010 (boomark / email).