Probably not enough, says Professor Schiess.

If so, check out We Are the Products of Editing, by University of Missouri law professor Doug Abrams, in the Missouri Bar’s quarterly magazine, Precedent. Hat tip: Legal Writing Prof Blog.

Not a pair of topics that you’d automatically put together, but bear with me . . .  Legal writing enthusiasts differ on the proper use of footnotes, and I’ve posted before about the debate. One appellate jurist addressing my law school class advised that if a point is important enough to go in the brief, then it’s important enough to go in the body text of the brief rather than in a footnote. Ray Ward at the (new) legal writer noted that some people even presume that footnotes in appellate briefs are not likely to be read.   Yet, I’ll bet every lawyer at least remembers learning in Constitutional law class about…

Redlines, spell checking, auto-numbering, auto-capitalization, auto-page numbering . . . has high-tech document creation made us lazy proofreaders?  For some great low-tech proofreading tips, see Beyond Redlines and Spell-Check: Proofreading Tips from the Dark Ages (PDF Download) from Delaware attorney John J. Paschetto, published in the February 2008 issue of The Practical Lawyer magazine Hat Tip: Legal Writing Prof Blog.

I was searching for an old post at Wayne Scheiss’s legal-writring blog and accidentally ran across this nugget from 2005 on use of the word “blatant”: I’m starting to put it in the same category as “clearly” and “obviously.” It does not persuade. It only draws attention to itself as an effort to sound persuasive. Anytime a word draws attention to itself, it’s not good. And the attention it draws is therefore usually negative attention. I won’t use it in my writing.

Image from Wikipedia Ray Ward posted several months ago that starting a sentence with a conjunction is okay in an appellate brief. I wholeheartedly agree. I think it can make a sentence more powerful. Ward justifies the practice in part because the Unites States Constitution includes sentences starting with conjunctions and concludes, “So if it’s good enough for the U.S. Constitution, it’s good enough for that brief you’re working on.” But don’t take that logic too far. One of the constitutional excerpts Ward provides is Article II, section 1: “And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each…. But…

Legal Writing Prof Blog invites everyone to join the Legal Writing Institute. LWI is free and open to anyone interested in legal writing or the teaching of legal writing.  Go to the membership page to sign up.

It’s one of the first things we’re taught in a law school writing class: write to your audience. Clients, other attorneys, trial judges and appellate courts are four possible, and distinct, audiences, and you write differently for each of them. So insight into what that audience is looking for, and how it approaches your document, is valuable. Professor David Sorkin sets out to provide insight for writers of appellate briefs in his article, Appellate Briefs — A Reader’s Perspective. Its very brief abstract: Appellate briefs should make a court want to rule in the advocate’s favor, and should make it easy for the court to do so. An effective brief…

There are some grammatical “rules” that simply don’t make sense and can make your briefs more stilted if strictly followed. Two common favorites for being disregarded are: (1) don’t end a sentence with a preposition; and (2) don’t split an infinitive. I think most legal writers feel free, and rightly so, to ignore these “rules” when doing so makes for a smoother presentation. (Though Ray Ward says to be cautious about splitting infinitives.) These rules are general grammatical rules. A rule I have heard applied only to more formal writing, including legal writing, is “Do not use contractions.” From force of habit, I usually don’t. (Yes, I know I use…

Peeve time. The that/which distinction. If I had a nickel for every time a court opinion used “which” where it should have used “that,” I’d be rich. With misuse by the courts so widespread, it is almost tempting to mimic the courts’ misuse, lest the justices deem your correct usage an example of poor writing. But then comes this post at Set in Style, in which the author notes that legislatures have traditionally received “a pass” on misuse, but links to an exception explained in this post at The Legal Satyricon. The Chicago-Kent College of Law has a great statement and explanation of the rule here. And Grammar Girl has…

Ray Ward passes along that advice from Bryan Garner. What he means by it is to concentrate on a single type of edit on each editing pass. The post provides the eight types of review that Garner advocates be executed at a micro level. Get more detail at Ward’s post.

In a post entitled “Defending the single-sentence question presented:,” Professor Wayne Schiess confesses in the first line of the post: “I can’t.” Schiess pithily takes on the commonly asserted justifications of brevity and tradition. And he’s soliciting thoughts from those who prefer single-sentence questions presented.

Good briefs frequently start with a statement that in itself “hooks” the reader by immediately arousing his interest and making him want to continue. The same goes for judicial opinions, I think. Chief Judge Kozinski accomplished that with his single-sentence opening paragraph in New Hampshire Ins. Co. v. C’est Moi, Inc., case no. 06-55031 (9th Cir. Mar. 20, 2008): “We consider the doctrine that’s on everyone’s lips: uberrimae fidei.” Made me read the rest of it, anyway. UPDATE (3/20/08): Professor Martin points out that this is the second published decision from the Ninth on the uberrimae fidei doctrine in just six weeks, so maybe that opening line was not only…

Today is National Grammar Day, and Grammar Girl is commemorating it with a podcast of the “Top Ten Grammar Myths.”  You can download it as an .mp3 file or go to her transcript instead (the latter includes links to her detailed discussions of the myths).  I don’t think anyone is going to be surprised by her top grammar myth.