Litigation

Legal Writing: Is That Judge Smart, or Not?

By Evan Schaeffer

Does the use of simple words make you seem smarter? That's the topic of two recent blog posts from two different bloggers that I happened upon serendipitously by accident. One of the posts deals with a particular judge, which is the reason for the title of this post--

• "Use plain English, appear smarter (and more persuasive)," by Raymond Ward at the (new) legal wrtier; and
• "Mr. Garner's Simple English v. Judge Selya's Ultracrepidarian Lexiphanicism," by Martin Magnusson at Fairyland Castle.

As for the particular judge, I have no opinion. However, if you choose to take the advice suggested by most writing experts -- shorter sentences, shorter words, simpler writing -- here are a few tools that you can use to assess your own writing style:

• "Test Document Readability and Improve It";
• A tool for calculating your Gunning Fog Index;
• An explanation of various readability indexes.

Full post as published by The Illinois Trial Practice Blog on December 02, 2008 (boomark / email).