A Very Famous Legal Writer You Might Not Have Heard Of

Lord Alfred Denning wrote forcefully and clearly in favor of an old-fashioned morality particularly in matters related to marriage and was impatient with stare decisis (See prior post.) when the conditions that caused the old ruling to arise had changed. The link is to the episode about him on the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 Network's series The New Elizabethans, profiling important figures of the present queen's reign. Alfred Denning.

"Business Casual" Vocabulary in Legal Writing

Subscription-based newspaper/website Lawyers USA has good advice. When considering vocabulary, think "Business Casual."

Tips on Writing More Effectively

Law.com has "Tips on Becoming a More Effective Legal Writer."

Wisdom from the Master

Ten legal writing tips from Bryan Garner are here.

Good Habits Make Better Work

This is true. I am more productive if I shave in the morning for a writing day at the office.
A good book for improving writing productivity is Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande.You can buy it if you like (If you buy it here, I get a cut.).

What This Blog Is Trying to Be and Do

On February 26, I read the best article on blogging I've ever read Joel Spolsky's final column in March's Inc. magazine. He recounts Kathy Sierra's observation that an entrepreneur s blog has to be about something bigger than his or her company or his or her product. Such a blogger needs to share knowledge about the common interest(s) of the blogger and the reader. Blogs about the exploits of the blogger or the blogger's business is boring. (Don't we blog readers know that!)

So, who is this blog for and what is it about?

I started with the idea of a blog for lawyers who were thinking about bringing or defending an appeal-- more specifically, trial lawyers who were trying to decide whether or not to bring or defend an appeal or some other appellate proceeding themselves or whether or not to hire an appellate lawyer to do it. Additionally, appellate courts are beautiful, weird, old-fashioned institutions. Some of their processes and practices will never change: they inhere in their mission. Many of their practices are antiquated and will have to change. The third area this blog is intended to address is legal writing. Legal writing is actually improving greatly over what it has been in the past. The only other time in the history of common-law law practice that writing appears to me to have improved was when the Federal Rules of Procedure were introduced and many appellate judges and law professors were embarrassed by how badly their writing sounded. Still, of any communications profession I know of, lawyers still write the worst.

There is a tradition among political actors in some southern states, Texas for example, to thank God for Mississippi. (Sometimes it might be, instead, my mother's home state of Arkansas or my wife's people's home state of Louisiana.) Thank God for Mississippi, otherwise we'd be last in education (or some other government service). I say thank God for technical writers. They make lawyers sound clear.

This blog has a point of view. It reflects my point of view. I generally believe in following constituted legal authority, including procedural and local rules. Do your homework-- that is, your legal and factual research. (In the past lawyers had few precedents, no typewriters, no copy machines, no computers, no phones and no fax machines. Lawyers and judges travelled by horse. What the appellate community produces should be a whole lot better than it used to be.) Don't put a wrench in a court's work by not taking cognisance of a court's internal operating procedures. Use checklists. And write pithily, with power. Don't beat around the bush.

Bryan Garner's Coming to Town

He sees you when you're sleeping/
He knows when you're awake/
He knows if you've been bad or good/
So be good for goodness' sake!

The fountainhead of legal writing wisdom, Bryan A. Garner, is touring in February, March and on April 1. He'll be giving his Advanced Legal Writing and Editing Seminar in
Kansas City, St. Louis, Miami, Louisville, Nashville, Little Rock, Houston, Austin, Phoenix and Dallas. In Phoenix and Dallas, he will be additionally offering Advanced Legal Drafting the day after.
I took the writing and editing seminar a couple of years ago. He knows things that I have yet to learn, in spite of my having had years of experience and having been a high school English teacher. It was humbling; I was the grammar and usage maven in my world when I was a young man.
When I applied what I had learned at the seminar on my job, my boss's boss was unhappy with it.
Still, more and more of the judicial opinions that I read have the characteristic Garner touches: "fair but persuasive issues that have only one answer", hyphenated phrasal adjectives (Examples: 20-year-old sister, common-law claim, plain-view doctrine), and powerful conclusions. Garner turned me on to John R. Trimble's Writing with Style, the most helpful and enlightening book on writing that I can remember.

Why does a traveling Garner bring to mind Santa Claus at his most judgmental? Because few knowledgeable legal writers have not felt as Bryan Rutherford did in his haiku, which won Honorable Mention in the Texas State Bar Appellate Section Contest of 2004:

Only seventeen
syllables and, yet, Garner
could make it shorter.