LawProse Lessons

“I’m ready for my public now,” the late Dame Edna Everage used to say. Less jokingly, a writer might say, “I’m ready for my readers now.”          But what does the writer’s statement mean? It means that, as a writer, you have an ever-present awareness of your audience. It’s a matter of psychological preparation. If you …

LawProse Lesson #408 The Importance of a Writer’s Audience Read More »

Writing is a basic skill, especially in law. And so those of you who read last month in The New Yorker that humanities majors are declining precipitously in universities everywhere might have been alarmed. In the past decade, English majors have fallen by half in many if not most universities. At Harvard, the dean of …

LawProse Lesson #407 The Troubling Decline of the Humanities Read More »

As an editor or self-editor, you’re essentially a physician treating a patient (the composition). You must be a good diagnostician, and you must know the best possible treatments. Is the problem a superficial condition akin to slight bruising, or is it something so serious as to require resuscitation and intensive care?           To treat the sick, …

LawProse Lesson #406 You as Editor/Physician Read More »

Professional writers know that they’ve had to abandon various “school rules” to become successful. They’ve had to unlearn the untruths that seemingly all writers pick up along the way. (A prime example is the idea that you should never write a one-sentence paragraph.) A renegade writer rejects superstitions. The important thing is to know which …

LawProse Lesson #405 Renegade Writers Read More »

One common problem that legal writers have is plunging into sections of a project before developing a good sense of the whole. Imagine building parts of a house before having an architectural plan. A superb technique for team writing projects is to have every member individually prepare point headings—full-sentence propositions. These team members must be …

LawProse Lesson #404 Seeing the Forest Read More »

In 1943, Robert Graves and Alan Hodge wrote a classic book on English prose: The Reader over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose. It has stayed in print ever since, enjoying a particular upsurge in sales when re-released in the late 1970s. In their opening chapter, Graves and Hodge focus on a …

LawProse Lesson #403 The Reader over Your Shoulder Read More »

It was Samuel Goldwyn, the film producer, who said that a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. This witticism depends on our understanding the word verbal as equivalent to oral (or spoken). But is it? The most traditional meaning of verbal is “having to do with words.” If that’s so, then even …

LawProse Lesson #402 Verbal Contracts Read More »

A highly effective piece of writing—this includes legal writing—uses the resources of language so efficiently that readers are unconscious of manner and become aware only of matter. With a brief or motion, judicial readers readily perceive the argument, and the basis for it, without ever being baffled—and without even thinking that they’re reading an argument. …

LawProse Lesson #401 The Art that Conceals Art Read More »

From elementary-school days, people learn—and should continue learning—how to write forceful and grammatically correct sentences. If you have this skill, you have a good start on writing well. But there’s much more to it. You must cultivate the skill of combining sentences into logically coherent paragraphs. By way of analogy, paragraphs are to sentences what …

LawProse Lesson #400: So what’s a paragraph? Read More »

How is it done? You must study good models, practice steadily, and learn to develop and support suitable arguments. The whole point of schooling—of the weary grind in learning certain things by rote (whether a foreign language, English grammar, or the multiplication tables of old)—isn’t to acquire facts but instead to train your mind to …

LawProse Lesson #399: The way to learn to write. Read More »

A brief must satisfy the judge that the solutions it offers provide the best course of action: reverse, affirm, or remand with instructions. Or if it’s a motion: grant or deny, perhaps with qualifications. There’s no fill-in-the-blanks method—no “five easy steps.” There are no ready formulas or previously unrevealed secrets. Yet there are techniques for …

LawProse Lesson #398: A unified theory of brief-writing. Read More »

Many beginning legal writers think that established ones must have a formula for success. That’s just not so. The only secrets of success—beyond constant study of quality nonfiction and effective editorials—are dogged research, unstinting discipline, the embrace of individuality, and the spurning of complacency. These qualities lead to a kind of organized freedom. What makes …

LawProse Lesson #397: The formula for success. Read More »

For most people, writing is a frustrating and often unpleasant experience. If you actually enjoy the process, you’re both unusual and fortunate. Although every competent writer enjoys having written, composing the first draft is, for the majority, a difficult and joyless task—or perhaps an absolute horror. If you feel that way, you probably delay a …

LawProse Lesson #396: Buckling down to write. Read More »

Admittedly, there’s no universal method. But in a recent interview with Oxford University Press, Bryan A. Garner explains what made him such an inveterate word-lover—a passion that started in his teens. His path was unconventional, to say the least, and we think you’ll find the story charming. The interview is here. You’re sure to encounter …

LawProse Lesson 395: How to interest kids in language Read More »

A big problem haunts every composition course and every expository writer: how to attack a rhetorical challenge and work out the details. How do you start a writing project, and how do you complete it efficiently? If a writing course merely focuses on what sentences and paragraphs should end up resembling, students are left to …

LawProse Lesson #394: The Big Problem That Lurks in Every Writing Course. Read More »

It’s only slumbering. It can be awakened through study and practice. It takes time and effort. Some villains poison, strangle, and knife good writing by pandering to credulity and indolence—promoting the false belief that there’s a quick-and-easy method that will magically improve writing with miraculously little work. At LawProse, we promote good writing as a …

LawProse Lesson #393: Good writing isn’t dead. Read More »

At LawProse, we don’t teach remedial writing. The legal writers who benefit most from our seminars are the ones who are already quite good. Why is that? Because those are the ones who actually attend. So it’s natural that we’d focus on them. Why are bad legal writers unlikely to attend? Because incompetence doesn’t recognize itself. …

LawProse Lesson #392: The best get even better. Read More »

What do judges and law clerks want from a brief-writer? Once your readers sit down to focus—perhaps in a receptive mood—they demand certain information: What does the statute or contract actually require, and what precisely has happened between the parties? Does the text apply, or does it not? If it’s a criminal case, judicial readers want to …

LawProse Lesson 391: Law graduates who can write Read More »

Within the legal profession, there is an enormous and ever-growing demand for skillful writing. Good money is to be made by anyone who can deliver. But the writing must conform to certain requirements, which are obvious and reasonable when you know them. Yet they tend to escape the notice of the average legal writer. Some …

LawProse Lesson 390: Is writing well an inborn “gift”? Read More »

We hope not. It’s not the best reason to write. We hope you’re writing because you have an argument—or a series of arguments—to make on behalf of a client. You must have something worth communicating. Otherwise, you’d just be filling pages—and what you’d say would probably be forced, vacillating, and only half-true. You’d be doing …

LawProse Lesson 389: Are you writing a brief because it’s due? Read More »