the (new) legal writer

The root causes of bad legal writing

Why is most legal writing so bad? And what can be done about it? Wayne Schiess tackles these questions in Legal Writing Is Not What It Should Be. Some of the causes and proposed solutions are institutional. But one of Wayne’s proposed solutions is something each of us can, and should, do for ourselves:

Individual lawyers must take more responsibility for their own legal-writing skills and must constantly seek to improve. Lawyers should read a book on writing or legal writing once a year, open themselves up to honest critique, acquire and consult the best sources on writing, and attend a continuing-legal-education course on legal writing.

For Bridging the Gap participants and anyone else who’s interested

This afternoon, I’m presenting the appellate-practice hour of the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Bridging the Gap seminar for newly minted lawyers. For those participants and others who may be interested:

• my written materials
• a PDF copy of my PowerPoint presentationA PDF copy of my PowerPoint presentation
• A Writ in Time (my article on how to calculate the deadline to apply to a court of appeal for a supervisory writ).

Participants may also be interested in these two articles by Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit:

• In Praise of Moot Court — Not!, in which Judge Kozinski discusses the differences between law-school moot-court programs and real-world appellate practice.
• The Wrong Stuff, in which Judge Kozinski explains how to lose an appeal that, for whatever reason, you must lose.

Finally, here are some sample pleadings and briefs. Treat them only as samples, not as models. Use them with caution, as the rules may have changed since these were written.

• Sample notice of intent to seek supervisory writ
• Sample supervisory-writ application
• Sample motion and order for devolutive appeal
• Sample motion and order for suspensive appeal
  
• Sample brief filed in court of appeal
• Sample writ application filed in La. Supreme Court
• Sample merits brief filed in La. Supreme Court
  

Lawyer reprimanded for plagiarism

Pressed for time, a lawyer filed a 21-page brief, 17 pages of which were copied verbatim from a published article, without attribution. For this, he was publicly reprimanded by the Supreme Court of Iowa. The court found that the lawyer’s conduct violated a rule against “dishonesty, fraud, misrepresentation, or deceit.” (Hat tip to Legal Profession Blog.)

Today’s most entertaining legal-writing blog post ...

... comes courtesy of our friends at What About Clients/Paris?

Five golden rules for e-mail

If you’re reading this blog, then you probably write numerous e-mails every day. So do a favor for the readers of your e-mail: read and follow Marilyn Ruddick’s five golden rules for e-mail.

What to do if your boss prefers legalese

It’s a common problem. You believe what the writing experts say about plain English being better than legalese, but you work for someone who doesn’t, someone who prefers drecky legalese. What do you do? Wayne Schiess answers this question in a short, excellent article, which you can download here.