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Legal Writing

  • November 26, 2013 | CLE
    CLE: Legal Writing in the Smartphone Age

    Refine your legal writing skills with this Master Series seminar that teaches you how to draft concise language, avoid ambiguous wording, and identify which information is essential for inclusion in your writing!

    Gone are the long, flowing e-mail messages with pretty graphics and lots of attachments. Today’s communication – almost 100% electronic – is immediate, brief, clear, and powerful. Designed to boost your instant (or near-instant) message drafting skills, this program examines the ways in which lawyers’ traditional training in writing and communication ill-prepares them for this new age of “short and to the point.” Lawyers are communicating with clients and each other far differently than their mentors did – and far differently than how they were taught in law school – and many need help making the transition. Join nationally acclaimed speaker, Steven Stark, at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers on December 13thas he teaches the principles of good legal writing in these areas: technical writing; memos; letters and e-mails; litigation writing; and contract drafting.

    The program qualifies for 3.0 hours MCLE credit, including 3.0 hours approved Professional Responsibility MCLE credit.

    Click here for more information and to register.

  • October 5, 2012 | Practice News
    Legal Writing Checklist

    By Jim Covington, Illinois State Bar Association

    With the Illinois General Assembly in recess, ISBA Director of Legislative Affairs Jim Covington provides a helpful legal writing checklist. The full checklist is also available below the video.

    (1) Front-load your information by starting with a meaningful synopsis. Readers process information much easier if they know where they are going.

    (2) Use descriptive headings as signposts to guide your reader followed by bite-size chunks of text. Your sentences should average about 20 words per sentence because big chunks of text intimidate readers.

    (3) Use active voice so that the actor is doing the action instead of receiving it. We talk in active voice. For example, “I hit a home run” instead of “a home run was hit by me.” Active voice creates shorter, tighter sentences. Try to keep your passive sentences under 20%.

    (4) Use conversational word order. The natural flow of an English sentence is subject-verb-object. Don’t interrupt this flow by separating your subject from your verb with a long dependent clause. Don’t get bogged down starting with a long dependent clause. Ask yourself, “Who is doing what to whom?”

    (5) Less is more. No judge ever finished reading a concise brief or motion and wished it were longer.

    1 comment (Most recent October 12, 2012)
  • August 21, 2012 | Practice News
    "In the instant case"

    This morning I was reading a petition that had been filed in the appellate court and kept stumbling over the phrase “the instant case.” What? Did the writer mean “this case?”

    Steven Stark is his excellent book Writing to Win wonders if the phrase “in the instant case” means, “if you mix powder with milk, you get a case.”

    Not to get my knickers in a knot here, but what’s wrong with “this case?” Just as silly to me are the phrases “the case at bar” or “the case at hand.”

    “This” is a useful and accurate word. You use it all the time in casual conversation. Don’t be afraid of it.  

    4 comments (Most recent August 24, 2012)
  • August 15, 2012 | Practice News
    Attack of the Zombie Nouns

    Zombie nouns flourish in legal writing. They smother lively verbs and suck the vitality and clarity right out your prose. Bryan A. Garner believes that they are a bigger problem in legal writing than incorrectly using the passive voice.

    2 comments (Most recent August 16, 2012)
  • July 30, 2012 | Practice News
    Do you use the word "shall?"

    Do you use the word shall  when you draft documents? If so, you may want to reconsider doing so. Bryan A. Garner, the edtior-in-chief of Black's Law Dictionary, makes a compelling case for abandoning shall and using the more precise words must, will, is, may, or the phrase is entitled to in the most recent ABA Journal.

    You'll be in good company if you abandon shall; so have all four sets of the major federal rules with the exception of one rule. (Rule 56 of the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure.)