Wayne Schiess’s legal-writing blog begins a post about summarizing your points with a very absolutist sentence:  “Every legal document should begin with a summary of some kind.”  Hear, hear!  He gives you pointers for doing so, with before-and-after examples illustrating how to present important information early, leave tedious details for later, and avoid abstraction.  And since the title of the post includes “part 1,” you’ll want to follow his blog for the follow-up posts.

In a four-post series titled “Topic and transition sentences in case explanations,” (part 1 here, with the remaining three immediately following), Wayne Schiess’s legal-writing blog gives a great exposition of how to transform rote sequential introduction of cases into a flowing narrative that uses each case to further develop your argument.

If you’re a fan of legal writing and/or legal blogs, you’ve probably read this elsewhere already.  But I’m still playing catchup from the holidays and thought some of you might be, too, so here goes. Jeff Skilling filed his reply brief in his Fifth Circuit appeal of his convictions.  You might remember earlier posts about the extraordinary length of his opening brief here and here, the former of which also has a round-up of commentary on its substance.    According to White Collar Crime Prof Blog, the 161-page reply is the shortest brief filed in the case yet.  The blog follows up with some commentary on the substance of the…

For an incomprehenible document title that will make you laugh, check this post at the (new) legal writer.  It’s funny, but it also refers to a real-life problem.

Professor Wayne Schiess excerpts The Party of the First Part by Adam Freedman, who writes against legalese at his blog of the same name.  To illustrate that alternatives to word-for-word translation for Latin legal terms of art make it possible to one day abandon the Latin altogether, Freedman notes that “Great Writ” has been offered as a practical translation for: a.  coram nobis b.  habeas corpus c.  mandamus d.  certiorari You probably guessed correctly, but you’ll have to check the post to be sure.

Party of the First Part has a hilarious anecdotal post on the dangers of using a word processor to spell-check briefs containing latin legal phrases.  Which reminds me of this post.

Two posts at legal writing blogs Tuesday about footnotes. Raymond Ward at the (new) legal writer links to a paper at SSRN (Social Science Research Network) by Professor Douglas Abrams called “Those Pesky Footnotes — Part I.”  According to Ward: Professor Abrams divides footnotes into two groups that most of use are familiar with: citation-only footnotes and textual footnotes. Citational footnotes can be useful, Prof. Abrams writes, if they are kept lean. They show the support for the writer’s assertions without cluttering up the text. Textual footnotes, on the other hand, are usually useless to briefwriters for one simple reason: hardly anybody reads them. And anything that is not read…