What’s a quotation sandwich? It’s a means of making quotations an integral part of your writing. You don’t just plunk them on the page. You introduce them informatively and follow up smoothly. Though rare among legal writers, quotation sandwiches are delectable.
They overcome a problem we often hear about from appellate judges and law-firm partners. It’s a mania for acontextual quoting, born of diffidence. Lots of legal writers demote themselves from analysts to hunter-gatherers. They ransack the caselaw and string together passages containing “useful language,” all the while supplying minimal connective tissue.
Among novice legal writers, this problem is pervasive. The thinking goes something like this: “I’m just a law student [junior lawyer, etc.]. Nobody cares what I think. But I’ve found authoritative words from exalted appellate courts. I can present those and be done with it.” There’s a germ of truth in that reasoning, to be sure. But only a germ.
Your level of seniority doesn’t matter. The credibility of your analysis is what matters—not only finding the right precedents but also showing how and why they apply to the situation at hand. It’s the application where you can shine. You may have found the aptest authorities, but you shouldn’t assume that their meaning or aptness will be self-evident. You must show that they apply. The analysis is expected to win its own way. Nobody is evaluating your writing by reference to your résumé.
Even though this point about quotations may seem like a superficial aspect of writing, in fact it fundamentally affects how you’re using authorities. Consider this example from a brief:
Texas Property Code § 54.021 provides:
A person who leases or rents all or part of a building for nonresidential use has a preference lien on the property of the tenant or subtenant in the building for rent that is due and for rent that is to become due during the current 12-month period succeeding the date of the beginning of the rental agreement or an anniversary of that date.
Meanwhile, Texas Property Code § 54.022(a)(West 2022) provides that “[t]he lien is unenforceable for rent on a commercial building that is more than six months pas due unless the landlord files a lien statement with the county clerk of the county in which the building is located.” Moreover, § 54.024 states: “The lien exists while the tenant occupies and until one month after the day that the tenant abandons the building.”
If you write that way, you just collect snippets from the statute book. The burden is one the reader to figure out why you’re using them. Instead, you should explain those quotations. Put them in context. By way of faithful paraphrase, you can cement the ideas more firmly in the reader’s mind:
The Texas Property Code has elaborate rules for lien preferences on lessees’ property. The basic provision (§ 54.021) establishes a lien for which no filing is necessary:
A person who leases or rents all or part of a building for nonresidential use has a preference lien on the property of the tenant or subtenant in the building for rent that is due and for rent that is to become due during the current 12-month period succeeding the date of the beginning of the rental agreement or an anniversary of that date.
This lien, which arises by operation of the statute, is not without substantial limitations. After six months, it becomes a nullity unless supported by a filing: “The lien is unenforceable for rent on a commercial building that is more than six months past due unless the landlord files a lien statement with the county clerk of the county in which the building is located.” (§ 54.022(a).) And the lien is valid only during the tenancy and one month after the lessee vacates the premises: “The lien exists while the tenant occupies and until one month after the day that the tenant abandons the building.” (§ 54.024.) Although that provision is worded in terms of “abandonment,” the caselaw makes clear that the legislature simply meant vacating the premises. [Citations follow.]
The layers that you supply—the top and the bottom of the sandwich—are crucial to your credibility as an analyst. True, the revised version is longer, but it actually says something. The original was no better than a series of photocopied pages.
Thus endeth today’s LawProse Lesson. Come see us soon.
Further reading:
Legal Writing in Plain English 101–04 (2d ed. 2013).
The Winning Brief 501–07 (3d ed. 2014).
Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges 128–29 (2008).