Tips from the Austin Appellate Bench for You

Third Court of Appeals Justice Jim Moseley gives you tips for persuasive briefs here.

Words to the Wise, Particularly if You're Briefing the Texas Supreme Court

Martha Lackritz is a law clerk to Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson of the Texas Supreme Court in Austin. She graduated from the University of California Berkeley School of Law and is a member of the State Bar of Texas and the State Bar of California. She wrote an excellent short article: "Common Blunders in Texas Supreme Court Briefs." Sstatements of facts in Supreme Court briefs are, she suggests, commonly too wordy, or are, alternatively, too terse. She complains that there are not enough citations in many briefs. She says that she sees the intermediate Texas courts of appeals overcited. Such cases do not bind the Supremes and can easily be overruled by them. She hears too much hyperbole in briefs.  Improper punctuation and typographic errors often arise. Briefs fail to counter arguments that the briefs are supposed to be  responding to. Lastly, she reports that record citations are not used enough.

What Would David Ogilvy Do?

Here I try to help you do legal writing. One of the best pre-law preparations I had for legal writing was to work as a journalist and an advertising copywriter. An article in Lawyers USA Online helps you apply advertising copywriting principles to your brief writing.
David Ogilvy, one of the founders of the advertising firm Ogilvy and Mather, was a master of long-form magazine copywriting. Now forms are shorter, and magazines are dying. The main long-form written persuasion that is left is: legal briefs.
Can't pass up a entry on Ogilvy in the Mad Men blog.