Legal Writing

Monster v. Blue Jeans, Esq.

Posted on April 17, 2008
    It’s like David v. Goliath. There’s a big manufacturer. It likes to throw its weight around. It sends a cease-and-desist letter to some Mom-and-Pop shop. It turns out that Pop is a lawyer, and he’s got a formidable sense of humor...

Gobbledygook Has Gotta Go

Posted on April 16, 2008
Yesterday, the House passed the Plain Language in Government Communications Act of 2008 by a vote of 376 to 1. The act requires government agencies to use plain language in commonly-used forms (like those issued by the IRS and the SSA). This article (published today) describes the massive effort underway at the Veterans Affairs Department to [...

Writing Consultants for Law Firms

Posted on April 14, 2008
Thanks to the Legal Writing Prof Blog for mentioning this article about how law firms are using legal writing instructors to support and train their lawyers. Let’s see, if lawyers need help with the sort of writing they studied in law school, then they certainly need help with the sort of writing they never studied, and [...

Publishing Fuzzy Reprints

Posted on April 09, 2008
The GC for a high tech firm is looking for counsel familiar with this or that. He asks around and he hears about you. Before he takes the time to call you, he asks an associate to do some research. What does the associate do? The first thing she does is review your firm’s Web site...

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Legal Writing Teacher Wins Pulitzer

Posted on April 08, 2008
Just in from the AP (announcing the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners): BIOGRAPHY: “Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father,” by John Matteson Matteson said his 14-year-old daughter was an inspiration for his book, which is about a girl’s relationship with her father...

Scalia Sits Still for Stahl

Posted on April 08, 2008
The Blog of Legal Times informs us that Antonin Scalia is going to be interviewed by Leslie Stahl on the 27 April episode of 60 Minutes. Seems as if the camera-shy justice is making an appearance to promote his upcoming book (co-authored by Bryan Garner) Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges.

Undoing the Not Knot

Posted on April 05, 2008
There was some noise this week about a revision to an Arkansas law (Acts 2007, No. 441, § 1), passed last March, that — on its face — allowed children of any age to get a marriage license, just so long as they had their parents’ permission...

Legal Writing and Poetry

Posted on April 03, 2008
Kudos to Greg May (host of The California Blog of Appeal) for informing us of this award given to Justice Arthur Gilbert, ?The California Court of Appeal?s poet laureate.”

What Can an Editor Do for a Law Firm?

Posted on March 31, 2008
In addition to making sure that the articles a firm publishes are free from spelling and grammatical errors, an editor can help make sure those articles are free from factual errors. Let’s look at a few real-world examples: several articles describing the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in LaRue v...

Legal Writing Garb

Posted on March 29, 2008
If legal writing is your passion, then you need treatment. Just kidding. Seriously, if it’s your passion, then you can wear it on your sleeve, or on your head or your back or your butt, or you can stick it on your refrigerator or your window, or you can sip from it or cook with [...

Forgetting Guff

Posted on March 25, 2008
In this interview published by Management Consulting News, Tom Sant, author of The Language of Success, describes a writing style he calls Guff: Guff is another form of pseudo language. This is the mode people use when they want to convince us that they are more intelligent [...

The Risks of Sounding All-Too-Dignified

Posted on March 24, 2008
Big news this morning: the JP Morgan/Bear Stearns merger agreement is being revised. The motivation? Apparently, a drafting error. This, from a story about it in today’s New York Times: One sentence was ?inadvertently included,? according to a person briefed on the talks, which requires JPMorgan to guarantee Bear?s trades even if shareholders voted down [...

Sounding Dignified

Posted on March 24, 2008
We consider the doctrine that?s on everyone?s lips: uberrimae fidei. That’s the opening line of a recent opinion authored by Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a man widely admired for his wit, humor, and (relatively) unconventional style of writing...

A Sign of the Times

Posted on March 19, 2008
The legal writing region is abuzz with Bryan Garner’s interviews with the justices of the Supreme Court. He asks them about legal writing, and they say what they think. Before you listen to the interviews, listen to some news. Listen as Senator Clinton is asked about this or that...

It Is as It Was (But Why?)

Posted on March 07, 2008
The Georgetown News-Graphic has this interesting piece (titled “Pleaseth updateth thy language”) about lawyers clinging to the past: using outmoded, cryptic language, going bonkers with caps, emulating Shakespeare, etc. Here’s an excerpt: In many ways, we have truly modernized...

Touched by an Editor

Posted on March 04, 2008
I’m editing a client alert (about laws regarding campaign contributions) when I run across the following: This bar extends to indirect contributions, for example, reimbursing a corporate employee who makes a contribution from his or her own funds...

Excellence at Nossaman

Posted on March 03, 2008
Nossaman claims “to uphold the highest standards of excellence.” Do its client alerts support that claim, or defy it?  Consider the grammatical errors in one client alert published by Nossaman: Minimum Wage Increase    Effective January 1, 2008, the California minimum wage increased from $7...

Which v. That

Posted on March 01, 2008

Missing the Basics

Posted on February 29, 2008

A Quiz on Caps

Posted on February 29, 2008

Famous Englician Dies

Posted on February 29, 2008
The University of Chicago has announced that Joseph Williams – Professor Emeritus of English, winner of the Legal Writing Institutes’s Golden Pen Award, author of an acclaimed text on how to write with style, and the architect of U of C’s writing program — died of natural causes on 22 February.

Lawyers’ Writing Wrongs

Posted on February 24, 2008

A Program for Getting Rid of Millennials

Posted on February 23, 2008

In Search of Excellence

Posted on February 23, 2008

Avoiding a Common Production Error

Posted on February 23, 2008

Weil Gotschal Pub Earns High Grade

Posted on February 21, 2008

The Pasts are No Guide to the Future

Posted on February 14, 2008

Many Results — One Outcome

Posted on February 11, 2008

Age Act Celebrates Anniversary Turns 40

Posted on February 08, 2008
From this article recently published in New York Employment Law: “The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) recently celebrated its 40th anniversary.” ____________ ____________

This Post (the “Post”)

Posted on February 07, 2008
You’re a lawyer and you want to write about the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Act”) or the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), so you define some abbreviations up front. That way, when you write, “The SEC is investigating so-and-so for some violation of the Act,” people know exactly what you mean (without [...

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