the (new) legal writer

Omit the parts that readers skip

A battle I fight every day: omitting words, sentences, paragraphs, entire sections that readers skip. So I’m grateful for this reminder by Elmore Leonard, via Ken Davis.

They must know different legislators than I do.

Westlaw’s headnote of the day:

The legislature is presumed to know the rules of grammar.

State v. DeMarco, 416 A.2d 949 (N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div. 1980).

Whom do you love?

Is whom dying out? If it does die out, will we miss it? If you’re interested, check out what Sentence first and Johnson have to say about this topic. Here at T(N)LW, we find this topic a good excuse to cite Bo Diddley.

Bad typography = higher concentration?

My friend Scott Stolley spotted an article saying that bad typography might be better for your brief. The theory is that if the readers have to work harder to read it, they will remember it better. Scott is skeptical, and so am I. Still, I’m all for airing views contrary to conventional wisdom. And if the theory holds water, maybe we should explore whether oral argument in a whiny voice is more effective.

Good ways to slim down a brief

If you ever have the need to squeeze an oversized brief under the court's page or word limit, my friend Scott Stolley has some excellent tips for you in this article, which you can also find here.

Scott is a contributor to Texas Appellate Watch, a 3-month-old law blog. If you practice in Texas, you’ll want to follow it.

Who else’s vocabulary includes “ossature”?

West’s headnote of the day:

Even during appellate review of a dismissal for failure to state a claim, which takes place under a set of plaintiff-friendly guidelines, the reviewing court cannot be expected to do counsel's work, create the ossature for the argument, and put flesh on its bones.
Redondo-Borges v. U.S. Dept. of Hous. & Urban Dev., 421 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2005).

Without looking up the case, I’m guessing it’s written by Judge Selya. Ossature is a dead giveaway.

Judge Lebovits on how to answer interrogatories

I don’t recall any other legal-writing article tackling the topic of Judge Lebovits’s latest: Responding to Interrogatories. So if responding to written discovery is something you do from time to time, you may want to read the article—you may pick up a tip or two.

Font cats

Twenty fonts and (we’re told) the cats who inspired them. Since I live with four cats, I’m obligated to link to this. Also we have a Persian that’s a dead ringer for # 6, except ours has two eyes (see photo at left). (Hat tip to Peter Athas.)

Blogroll maintenance

Today I did some long-overdue maintenance of my legal-writing blogroll. If you haven’t browsed the selections there, why not have a look? It’s just to the left, right under “Recent Comments.” Relatively recent additions include the following:

• Mark Adler. Mark is from England. He retired as a solicitor a few years ago and now lives in in the southern French mountains. His web site “is intended for lawyers and others (including lawyers' clients) who are interested in legal language; but it includes some items which deal with language in general for those who want a wider perspective.” Among the recent additions to his Comment page is Stressful Ambiguity, a short piece demonstrating how sentences that are clear when spoken can become ambiguous when written.


• Sentence first, billed as “an Irishman’s blog about the English language.” Its proprietor is Stan Carey, who describes himself as “a scientist and writer turned editor and swivel-chair linguist.”


• Appellate Record, where Texas appellate lawyer Kendall Gray writes entertainingly about legal writing.

PEEL your argument.

Over at Writing to Done, guest poster David Masters offers an interesting structure for an argument: PEEL, which stands for Point, Evidence, Evaluation, and Link.