Be yourself

Here is a lesson for singers, applied by Tom Peters to giving speeches and presentations, re-applied by Roy Jacobsen to writing generally, and now re-applied by me to legal writing, especially persuasive writing:

"Put your life into what you do." "Your own humanity is your pathway to artistry." Beware "stilted speech." Students "hide inside technique." Conclusion: "The lesson Ms Cook came to teach was that artists achieve their peak when they learn to stop proving themselves and simply, to borrow the Shakespearean phrase, let it be. It’s their humanity we respond to in the end, their ability to strip away the self-consciousness that locks us inside ourselves, and reveal the stuff that really boils in our souls."

This is one reason why I discourage lawyers from over-reliance on forms when trying to write persuasively: because a form written by someone else cannot possibly convey your humanity.