LawProse Lessons

As an advocate, what are your two most important words? Can you even identify their part of speech? Verbs? Nouns? Remember: we’re asking about two particular words, not types of words. Do you give up? They’re conjunctions—and subordinating conjunctions at that. The words are because and although. These words occur often in first-rate persuasive writing. Clunky writers, naturally enough, use …

LawProse Lesson #450: The Advocate’s Two Most Important Words Read More »

It’s perhaps easy to forget that persuasion depends on a choice between competing positions—and therefore a conflict. As Aristotle taught us, there’s no reason to persuade if there’s no sense of choice. Argument is useful only if more than one course of action is possible. We argue and attempt to persuade only when people clash …

LawProse Lesson #449: Embrace the clash Read More »

Everyone is constantly bombarded by persuasive messaging—only some of which works. It’s not just advertisers who want us to buy or politicians who want us to vote or donate. It’s also friends and colleagues who want us to support their ideas. Persuaders today have found more and more sophisticated ways of reaching us, even if …

LawProse Lesson #448: A new perspective on persuasion Read More »

What are good writers like? We might generalize from decades of experience:

People who write regularly tend to write well and to enjoy it; people who write infrequently tend to write poorly and to dread it. So how can you enhance your (ahem) regularity? We recommend seven steps: With an inward emotional commitment to write—even if it’s just personal letters—you’ll find that all your writing will improve.     …

LawProse Lesson #445: Increasing your productivity as a writer Read More »

We’ve noticed a trend. Some junior lawyers get frustrated by having a boss rework everything they write. Instead of analyzing and learning from the changes and then redoubling their efforts with each new writing project, they detach themselves and begin turning in half-baked work. If asked why, they say something like this: “Harold’s just going …

LawProse Lesson #443: Don’t expect others to clean up your mess Read More »

Lawyers constantly define terms, often poorly. For detailed guidance on defining effectively, together with lots of before-and-after examples, see pp. 357–79 of Garner’s Coursebook on Drafting and Editing Contracts (2020). In the short space we have here, we’ll give you seven brief pointers: That’s our definitive word on the subject.

Invisible Style: At LawProse, we tend to think that the best style is invisible to an experienced reader: the words disappear into the thought. They shouldn’t be so ostentatious that they draw attention to themselves. They shouldn’t be pretentious or eccentric, and they shouldn’t be semiliterate—or worse. Writing should be like an absolutely clean windowpane …

LawProse Lesson #441: Style as Invisible Read More »

Should you put one forward space or two after a period? It all depends on whether you’re adept at typography—and whether you’re willing to move on from something you might have learned years ago in a typewriting class. Here’s what you’ll find in The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (5th ed. 2023): “Although it’s true that …

LawProse Lesson #440: One or two spaces after a period? Read More »

What’s a good writing style? Over the millennia, there have been four basic theories about good style.           First, there’s the idea that it’s simply good character reflected in writing. As George-Louis Leclerc Buffon (the French naturalist) declared in the 18th century: “Style is the man himself.” More recently, the novelist Norman Mailer made a similar …

LawProse Lesson #439: What’s a good writing style? Read More »

The obvious goal is to provide an answer to a research problem—preferably in a way that solves a client’s problem—and to do it efficiently. Let’s assume you understand what the issue is. In finding an answer, you need to identify a rule that supports your conclusion. You’ll find that rule, one hopes, in both a …

LawProse Lesson #438: What’s the goal of a research memo? Read More »

The 18th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has just been published. It’s the most comprehensive style manual ever, and it will answer virtually every question you might have. (Except, that is, for the kinds of legal-style issues that are answered in The Redbook: A Manual of Legal Style, published in its fifth edition in 2023.)  Since …

LawProse Lesson #437: Did you hear about the new Chicago Manual? Read More »

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Law French (also written law-French) as “the corrupt variety of Norman French used in English lawbooks.” Rather more expansively, the newly issued 12th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary (2024) defines it as “the corrupted form of the Norman French language that arose in England after William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066 and that was used for …

LawProse Lesson #436: What is Law French? Read More »

Generally regarded as the greatest lawyer in ancient Rome, Cicero insisted that “success in persuasion” depends on three things: (1) conciliating the audience, (2) proving what we maintain to be true, and (3) producing in the audience’s minds whatever feeling our cause may require. In short, the audience must be conciliated, informed, and moved. “Lawyers,” …

LawProse Lesson #435: Cicero on Successful Persuasion Read More »

The top of the Democratic ticket—having candidates with sibilants at the ends of their names—is causing some predictable confusion. But behind the scenes, it’s highlighting an editorial anomaly in the AP Stylebook (followed by many newspapers), which specifies these results: 

There are many ways to write. Of course. The humorist James Thurber (1894–1961) often did it at parties while pretending to listen to somebody who was talking to him. He admitted this in one of our favorite collections: Conversations with James Thurber (Thomas Fensch ed., 1989). He also did it when retyping drafts, which allowed him to …

LawProse Lesson 433: James Thurber’s retyping of drafts Read More »

A historic concurrence was recently handed down in the Eleventh Circuit, by Judge Kevin Newsom. We predict that it will go down in history as the first significant use of AI in judicial decision-making, even if almost all of it occurs in dictum. Especially if you’re skeptical, please read on.   Judge Newsom broke with …

LawProse Lesson 432: Judge Kevin Newsom’s Arresting Candor in a Momentous Opinion Read More »

Do you remember those awful, enormous tailfins sported by American cars in the 1950s? They had no practical function. They didn’t make the cars drive better; there was nothing aerodynamic about them. They had nothing to do with transportation. Their sole purpose was to get attention. In writing circles, it’s often said that you should …

LawProse Lesson #431: Avoiding tailfin leads Read More »

What’s the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing? To paraphrase is to recast a passage mostly in your own words; to summarize is to capture the essence of a message almost entirely in your own words, and in a much shorter statement. A paraphrase is about the same length as the original, perhaps a little shorter; a summary is significantly …

LawProse Lesson #430: Paraphrasing vs. Summarizing vs. Quoting Obscurities Read More »

You occasionally hear someone say that none requires a singular verb: None is there, never None are there. Is that right? Unequivocally no. For more than 1,200 years, English speakers and writers have said none are—especially in sentences like None of them are, where the subject is None (not them). In fact, None of them are is more than twice as common in modern print as None …

LawProse Lesson 429: Is “none are” acceptable? Read More »