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Saving Souls One (1) Lawyer at a Time

By Bruce Carton

Over at The Appellate Record blog, Kendall Gray is on a mission to save at least one soul from the "purgatory of legalism." He is doing so by pointing out the inane practice, which still continues in many law offices (you know who you are), of writing legal memos or letters as if you were writing a check. Like this: Five (5) days ago, or maybe it was six (6), I got one (1) e-mail from a blog reader and appellate-lawyer-colleague. Gray says this kind of writing makes his "head explode." Amen to that! He explains that writing to make something appear more "legal," like when people insist on additionally placing numbers within parentheses, falls within the "class of edits that make a brief objectively worse than it was before" and has the effect of: 1. (one) interfering with the narrative; 2. (two) obscuring the argument; 3. (three) annoying the reader; and 4. (four) generally just sounding dumb. Gray adds that human beings don't need this kind of help in reading a document. Neither do lawyers, for that matter. If Legal Blog Watch can help Gray save even one (1) lawyer from perpetuating this practice, it will have been a...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on February 11, 2011 (boomark / email).