The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well
Chapter One
Does Bad Writing Really Matter?
Most lawyers write poorly.
That's not just our lament. Leading lawyers across the country agree. They
think modern legal writing is flabby, prolix, obscure, opaque,
ungrammatical, dull, boring, redundant, disorganized, gray, dense,
unimaginative, impersonal, foggy, infirm, indistinct, stilted, arcane,
confused, heavy-handed, jargon- and cliche-ridden, ponderous, weaseling,
overblown, pseudointellectual, hyperbolic, misleading, incivil, labored,
bloodless, vacuous, evasive, pretentious, convoluted, rambling,
incoherent, choked, archaic, orotund, and fuzzy.
Many critics amplified: Lawyers don't know basic grammar and syntax. They
can't say anything simply. They have no judgment and don't know what to
include or what to leave out. They do not know how to tell a story-where
to begin, when to end, or how to organize it. They get so carried away
with their advocacy that they distort and even deceive.
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The diffic ... read full excerpt from The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well ebook
