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Miscellaneous

the (new) legal writer

A collection of resources for lawyers, who write. From Raymond Ward, an appellate lawyer with Adams and Reese LLP in New Orleans.

Post Frequency: 4/day

Last Entry: May 23, 2013 at 17:23:00

A clinic in vivid storytelling

Posted on May 23, 2013
If you want a little lesson in livening up your stories, take a look at Roy Peter Clark?s analysis of a radio story by Wade Goodwyn, describing the monster tornado in Oklahoma.

A little editing exercise

Posted on May 15, 2013
This post is an editing exercise, something I haven?t done on this blog in a long time. It?s prompted by the following sentence, which I recently came across in a brief (party?s name changed): Accepting this argument is to reward...

Very superstitious writing on the wall?and many other places.

Posted on May 10, 2013
Bryan Garner has been running a series of posts on writing superstitions. Today?s installment addresses starting a sentence with because. (It?s okay to do so.) A prior post refuted the superstition against starting a sentence with a conjunction. Here at...

Why I blog about things I barely know

Posted on May 08, 2013
Today?s Daily Meditation by Henri Nouwen describes the satisfaction I get from blogging: Often we think that we do not know enough to be able to teach others. We might even become hesitant to tell others what we know, out...

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For punctuation geeks, an interesting decision by the U.S. 2nd Circuit

Posted on May 01, 2013
Does a modifying phrase following a list of nouns or phrases modify each item on the entire list, or only the last item? That depends on whether the modifying phrase is separated from the last item by a comma. So...

For RSS readers, I recommend Feedly.

Posted on April 25, 2013
For reasons known only to themselves, the good folks at Google are cancelling the Google Reader come July. If you have been using Google Reader to follow blogs (including this one), and if you are still looking for another reader,...

What is the possessive of ?Blind Boys from Alabama??

Posted on April 24, 2013
Over on a certain social-networking site, I referred to ?The Blind Boys of Alabama?s version of ?Amazing Grace.?? Which got me to wondering whether I put the apostrophe-S in the right spot. Should it be ?Blind Boys? of Alabama?? What...

Ambiguous punctuation leads to loss of attorney?s fees (or is it attorneys? fees?)

Posted on April 15, 2013
Last week, a Florida appellate court reversed an award of attorney?s fees awarded following an offer of judgment because ?ambiguities in the offer prevent its enforceability.? The cause of the ambiguity: misplaced apostrophes: The offer was apostrophe-challenged, creating ambiguities as...

My first Scribes board meeting

Posted on April 13, 2013
I just returned from my first meeting as a member of the Scribes board of directors. I knew that these were my kind of people, but I had no idea how much so until I read the minutes from last...

Mark Herrmann riffs on big-firm mediocre.

Posted on April 08, 2013
I started this blog as a statement against?something. Something that, until today, I did not know the name of: the mindless, formulaic stuff that too many of us are forced to read daily. God bless Mark Herrmann for naming it:...

An inspiring quotation by Albert Einstein

Posted on March 26, 2013
?If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.? ?Albert Einstein, courtesy of Brainy Quotes.

?Fess up: How many of you are this rigorous all the time?

Posted on March 26, 2013
This quotation caught my eye. It comes courtesy of Bryan Garner?s legal-writing blog: The order of ideas in a sentence or paragraph should be such that the reader need not rearrange them in his mind. The natural arrangement of ideas...

This pun hurts.

Posted on March 16, 2013
In The Elements of Legal Style, � 6.7, Bryan Garner explans paronomasia as a rhetorical device. The short word for it is puns. I thought of that when I read the title of this law-review article.

Why the new pope does not need a Roman number

Posted on March 13, 2013
Query: Should the new pope be called Francis I, or just Francis? I mean, there has been no other Pope Francis; therefore no need for a number to differentiate him. Kind of like referring to a man as ?Sr.? before...

Ever read a brief requiring this warning?

Posted on March 12, 2013
The good folks at Improbable Research call our attention to a document by the Department of Energy. The first page warns, ?Portions of this document are illegible.? I have scrolled through it, and I?ve got to tell you, it?s no...

On the care and feeding of your designated briefwriter

Posted on March 11, 2013
This post, courtesy of Matt Stibbe at Bad Language, is not so much for briefwriters as for those who manage briefwriters. But it may help briefwriters understand their own needs. (Except, in my case, for the nicotine part.) Me, I...

Are we afflicted by the Dunning-Kruger problem?

Posted on March 01, 2013
The ABA Journal has an interesting article by Bryan Garner, Why Lawyers Can?t Write. The causes are pervasive and complex. What I found more interesting is Bryan?s identification of a related problem: Why lawyers don?t recognize the deficiencies in their...

Legal Productivity?s top 10 legal-writing blogs

Posted on February 26, 2013
The good folks at Legal Productivity have put together a list of their top 10 legal-writing blogs. I am happy that they included this one, and I can vouch for several others on their list.

Keeping it real, definite, and concrete

Posted on February 25, 2013
Good Copy, Bad Copy has an excellent post showing how real, definite, concrete language grabs people?s hearts, as opposed to the opposite, which doesn?t. It will only take a couple of minutes to read. I guarantee that those minutes will...

Analyzing the problem with ?the Lenten season?

Posted on February 21, 2013
Yesterday?s rant about ?the Lenten season? was fun to write. But today it occurred to me that a deeper analysis of the problem and the solution might be useful. The lesson is one part George Orwell and one part C....

Please use this four-letter word

Posted on February 20, 2013
Well, I didn?t resolve to give up anything for Lent, but it seems that my penance has found me. For some reason, no one in the news media seems capable of referring to Lent as ?Lent.? Instead, they feed us...

Anyone want to bet that this opinion is not by Judge Selya?

Posted on February 15, 2013
Here is West?s Headnote of the Day: It is not enough merely to mention a possible argument in a brief in the most skeletal way, leaving the court to do counsel?s work, create the ossature for the argument, and put...

Bryan Garner?s blog

Posted on February 11, 2013
Bryan Garner has started a legal-writing blog. Most of the content consists of his Usage Tips of the Day, which themselves are worthwhile. But he occasionally posts other worthwhile things, such as this post on how to craft a letter....

Want to read some good briefs for a change?

Posted on February 11, 2013
Over at Texas Appellate Watch, my friend Scott Stolley has posted some examples of his handiwork. Scott is one of the best appellate lawyers you?ll ever come across. So if you want to see how it?s done by a real...

Job lead for legal-writing teachers

Posted on January 31, 2013
If you teach legal writing or want to, check out this announcement by the Richmond School of Law. They want to hire five full-time legal-writing professors to build and teach their revamped legal-writing program. The most interesting part: the new...

The Q continuum: From Quintilian to Quiller-Couch

Posted on January 07, 2013
The always interesting Roy Peter Clark has an interesting post about lessons that persuasive writers can learn from Arthur Quiller-Couch and Quintilian. Good stuff?check it out.

My resolution for the New Year: A new blog

Posted on January 01, 2013
For years, I have wanted to write a book on Louisiana appellate practice. Not some legal-theory thing, but a nuts-and-bolts, this-is-how-I-do-it thing. Problem is, I don?t have the time to write a book. But maybe, every now and then I...

Need a dictionary?

Posted on December 30, 2012
Over at Daily Writing Tips, Mark Nichol has links to six on-line dictionaries with descriptions of each one?s offerings. I?ve used two that he links to: Merriam-Webster and the Free Dictionary. I especially like the latter?s home page because it...

Wayne?s tips on writing for screen readers

Posted on December 29, 2012
Wayne Schiess has an interesting post on formatting your writing for screen readers. As Wayne points out, more and more people?including judges?are reading your writing on screen instead of on paper. So it makes sense to format your brief, memo,...

On informal style

Posted on December 22, 2012
Just passing on an interesting post about informal style in writing generally and legal writing particularly, inspired by the Green Bag?s 2012 honorees for exemplary legal writing.1 It?s by Ryan G. Koopmans, a contributor to On Brief: Iowa?s Appellate Blog...

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