Legal Writing Handbook
V. Writing to and for Other Lawyers (cont.)
E. Rewriting, Editing, and Proofreading the Final Draft
How to Know When to Stop.
In the Arkansas Appellate Advocacy handbook, Gerry Schulze's first draft read:
A good advocate knows what to say and when to say it.
A superb advocate knows when to shut up.
Unfortunately, his editor changed "shut up" to "stop talking."
Page limits in law have a different purpose than page limits in college. In college page limits are a minimum. In court page limits are a maximum. You are never obliged to use up your pages. In fact, "less is more" should be applied to legal writing, especially to Briefs.
Here are some clues you may have gone on too long.
10. You fall asleep while proofreading your own work.
9. You recognize entire sentences repeating.
8. You drop your draft on your foot-and it hurts.
7. You run out of space on your hard drive when you try to save your document.
6. You have made any given point more than twice.
5. You recognize entire sentences repeating.
4. You catch your transcriptionist sabotaging your dictaphone.
3. Your executive summary of a document is longer than the document.
2. A reader politely suggests that your brief would make a good law review article.
And
1. You reach the Conclusion and you've forgotten what your point was.
Rewriting.
There's really no such thing as a final draft in the law office. There's just the last draft completed before the deadline.
Revising and Polishing.
Here are some tried-and-true tips to cut the excess fat from your prose.
If you can't get anyone to read what you have written, try putting it to one side and coming back to it later.
Do a paragraph by paragraph analysis of your work.
- Does each paragraph have a point?
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Is there a sentence stating the point?
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Do the other sentences support that point.
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Are the paragraphs arranged in a logical sequence.
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Is there a smooth transition from one paragraph to the next.
- Should blocks of paragraphs have a header?
Vary the length of your paragraphs. Use short (one or two sentences) paragraphs sparingly. Remember that short paragraphs can be good for a transition.
Sometimes editing requires a sentence by sentence analysis.
If you have a sentence that does not work check:
- Is there a grammatical error? Identify the subject, verb, and object. Unless there is a reason, put the subject, verb, and object in that order.
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Check for unnecessary words.
- Keep the verb as close to the subject as possible.
- Keep modifiers near the words they modify.
- Keep related parts of the sentence together.
- Avoid strings of prepositional phrases whenever possible.
- Move parenthetical thoughts to other sentences where possible.
- Try to restrict your sentence to one idea.
- Recheck for misplaced modifiers.
- A modifier at the beginning of a sentence modifies the subject.
- Modifiers in the middle of sentences can be ambiguous.
- Does the modifier clearly modify either that which comes before or that which comes after.
- Make sure that it is clear that modifiers at the end of the sentence clearly modify what you want them to modify.
- They can modify the entire sentence or the concluding phrase.
Make sure you say what you mean.
And mean what you say.
Footnotes:
1. "Should" implies that there is a right way and a wrong way to use language. In school we were taught that some forms are right and others are wrong. To the scientific student of language, there is no form which is inherently right, and no form which is inherently wrong. It is not a sin to say "ain't," even in church. Right usage is simply usage which is accepted by the language community as right.
Who gets to decide? In English there is no person or group of persons with the recognized authority to decide that a particular usage is right or wrong. Many writers have taken upon themselves to prescribe which usage is correct, and which usage is incorrect. This has been going on for centuries. Some authorities rely on the usages they hear in their communities. Unfortunately, however, many of the authorities also relied on such inaccurate guides. The most inaccurate guides are logic and common sense. It is also seldom helpful to impose the structure of other languages on English. Comparison with other languages is even more likely to mislead those who believe other languages are superior to English.
2. A few centuries ago, linguists believed that languages such as Latin, Ancient Greek, and Hebrew were superior to their modern degenerate offspring. Modern day linguists know that this is utter nonsense, but it is not difficult to understand where this idea came from. Greek and Hebrew were used to write the scriptures-the Word of God. Latin was the language of the Roman Empire. Admiration for the classical world was at its peak after the renaissance. Because of this "respect for the elders," classical rules of grammar, particularly from the Latin, were imported into English.
3. I must confess that this is a direct quote from one of my briefs as a young lawyer.
Go back
4. Or perhaps, to be more precise, a survey of certain legal writing might lead one to believe that in some circumstances -- not necessarily representative of legal writing as a whole -- a number of lawyers are, perhaps, hesitant to express a concept in a simple, declarative sentence where they feel such candor and forcefulness is inappropriate, maybe.
5. In order to adequately assist in drafting a Response to this Motion for Summary Judgment, you must be familiar with the following two defenses to a cause of action: "failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted," and "failure to state facts upon which relief can be granted."
The first means that there is no legal remedy available to the plaintiff upon which he can base his Complaint. The second means that there is a legal remedy available, but the plaintiff's facts don't rise to the level needed to sustain such an action.