Legal Writing

Less is More — Example #1

This post is the second in a series about proposals to provide legal services.

Consider a proposal to handle IP matters for some new company planning to do business around the world.

The proposal describes the firm’s trademark practice. Here’s a snippet of it:

By virtue of the breadth and depth of the firm?s trademark practice, we have garnered excellent relationships with leading trademark prosecution practitioners in virtually every commercially significant country.

That’s 28 words; let’s see what we get when we abbreviate that for busy readers.

First, a few observations:

1. Note the dramatic shift in point of view. The firm’s trademark practice is third-person, but what follows is in first-person. Readers prefer a steady point of view; dramatic or frequent shifts in point of view disrupt continuity.
2. The phrase we have garnered excellent relationships isn’t quite right. Garner is the wrong word: it’s too weak.
3. The phrase commercially significant country is problematic. Are oil producing nations commercially significant? Does the firm have relationships with trademark prosecution practitioners in virtually every one of them? Or is the claim just some hifalutin hyperbole?

Do clients want hifalutin hyperbole? Are they looking for a firm where attorneys spend ten hours writing what could be written in two? If not, then the proposal should promote those attorneys as precise and to-the-point, not vague and long-winded.

Consider this revision:

Our trademark attorneys maintain strong connections with leading trademark attorneys around the world.

That’s 13 words: less than half as many as the original.

Now, suppose you were the reader. And suppose  you had a number of proposals to review. And suppose you were busy. Would you prefer the one that uses 28 words to say what another says in 13, or vice versa?

More important than that, which version is more likely to leave the reader with the intended impression? The verbose one, or the concise one?

Full post as published by Set in Style on April 26, 2010 (boomark / email).