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Legal Writing in Plain English: A Text With Exercises Bryan A. Garner Admirably clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful-unfortunately, these adjectives rarely describe legal writing, whether in the form of briefs, opinions, contracts, or statutes. In Legal Writing in Plain English, Bryan A. Garner provides lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The book encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. In essence, it teaches straight thinking—a skill inseparable from good writing.
Replete with common sense and wit, the book draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through more than a decade of teaching in the field. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting. Meanwhile, Garner explores important aspects of document design. Basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section reinforce the book's principles. (An answer key to basic exercises is included in the book; answers to intermediate and advanced exercises are provided in a separate Instructor's Manual, free of charge to instructors.) Appendixes include a comprehensive punctuation guide with advice and examples, and four model documents.
Today more than ever before, legal professionals cannot afford to ignore the trend toward clear language shorn of jargon. Clients demand it, and courts reward it. Despite the age-old tradition of poor writing in law, Legal Writing in Plain English shows how legal writers can unshackle themselves.
Legal Writing in Plain English includes:
*Tips on generating thoughts, organizing them, and creating outlines.
*Sound advice on expressing your ideas clearly and powerfully.
*Dozens of real-life writing examples to illustrate writing problems and solutions.
*Exercises to reinforce principles of good writing (also available on the Internet).
*Helpful guidance on page layout.
*A punctuation guide that shows the correct uses of every punctuation mark.
*Model legal documents that demonstrate the power of plain English.
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Plain English for Lawyers Richard Wydick Wydick s Plain English for Lawyers--now in its fifth edition--has been a favorite of law students, legal writing teachers, lawyers, and judges for over 25 years.
In January 2005, the Legal Writing Institute gave Wydick its Golden Pen Award for having written Plain English for Lawyers. The Legal Writing Institute is a non-profit organization that provides a forum for discussion and scholarship about legal writing, analysis, and research. The Institute has over 1,300 members representing all of the ABA-accredited law schools in the United States. Its membership also includes law teachers from other nations, English teachers, and practicing lawyers.
The LWI award states: 'Plain English for Lawyers . . . has become a classic. Perhaps no single work has done more to improve the writing of lawyers and law students and to promote the modern trend toward a clear, plain style of legal writing.'
In 2003 Wydick retired after 32 years on the law faculty of the University of California, Davis. But he still teaches his favorite course -- a seminar in advanced legal writing for third-year law students. For the past eight summers he has also lectured at the International Legislative Drafting Institute presented in New Orleans by the Public Law Center, a joint venture of Tulane and Loyola law schools. There the audience consists of lawyers and non-lawyers from abroad who earn their living drafting legislation in many different languages. 'Teaching at the Institute,' Wydick says, 'is a precious opportunity to learn how much we English-users have in common with people who write laws in other languages.'
How does the fifth edition of Plain English for Lawyers differ from its predecessors? It remains (in size only!) a little book, small enough and palatable enough not to intimidate over-loaded law students. 'Most of the text remains the same,' Wydick says, 'but in the past seven years I ve learned some new things about writing in English, and I want to share that with the readers.' In addition, the exercises at the end of the chapters are different (a welcome change for long-time teachers who are tired of the old ones). Finally, the teacher's manual includes additional exercises that teachers can give to students who want or need extra practice. |
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Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation's Top Advocates Ross Guberman With Point Made, legal writing expert Ross Guberman throws a life preserver to attorneys, who are under more pressure than ever to produce compelling prose. What is the strongest opening for a motion or brief? How to draft winning headings? How to tell a persuasive story when the record is dry and dense? The answers are "more science than art," says Guberman, who has analyzed stellar arguments by distinguished attorneys to develop step-by-step instructions for achieving the results you want.
The author takes an empirical approach, drawing heavily on the writings of the nation's 50 most influential lawyers, including Barack Obama, John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Ted Olson, and David Boies. Their strategies, demystified and broken down into specific, learnable techniques, become a detailed writing guide full of practical models. In FCC v. Fox, for example, Kathleen Sullivan conjures the potentially dangerous, unintended consequences of finding for the other side (the "Why Should I Care?" technique). Arguing against allowing the FCC to continue fining broadcasters that let the "F-word" slip out, she highlights the chilling effect these fines have on America's radio and TV stations, "discouraging live programming altogether, with attendant loss to valuable and vibrant programming that has long been part of American culture."
Each chapter of Point Made focuses on a typically tough challenge, providing a strategic roadmap and practical tips along with annotated examples of how prominent attorneys have resolved that challenge in varied trial and appellate briefs. Short examples and explanations with engaging titles--"Brass Tacks," "Talk to Yourself," "Russian Doll"--deliver weighty materials with a light tone, making the guidelines easy to remember and apply. |
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Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review, 4th Eugene Volokh Designed to help law students write and publish articles, this text provides detailed instructions for every aspect of the law school writing, research, and publication process. Topics covered include law review articles and student notes, seminar term papers, how to shift from research to writing, cite-checking others work, publishing, and publicizing written works. The book helps law students and everyone else involved in academic legal writing: professors save time and effort communicating basic points to students; law schools satisfy the American Bar Association's second- and third-year writing requirements; and law reviews receive better notes from their staff. The Fourth Edition adds examples drawn from successful student notes, coupled with detailed explanations of what makes the examples effective, and how they could have been made still more effective. It also elaborates further on how one can research a topic more comprehensively than many students do, both by finding a broader range of examples and applications, and by investigating the key cases more deeply. |
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Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do Tina L. Stark A perfect fit for the upper-level legal drafting course, Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do teaches the key practices of contract drafting, with particular emphasis on how to incorporate the business deal into the contract and add value to the client¿s deal. By providing many solid examples of quality writing, the book helps students to master the basics and to incorporate similar techniques into their own drafting. This text is also appropriate for use in transactional simulation courses, transactional clinics, advanced writing courses, first-year writing courses, first year-contracts courses, and interviewing, negotiating, and counseling courses. Many great features ensure the value and reliability of this text: - PART I: introduces the building blocks of contracts and teaches the analytic skill of ¿translating the business deal into contract concepts¿ so that students learn how and why a drafter chooses a specific contract concept
- PART II: sets out the framework of an agreement and works through it from the preamble to the signature lines, discussing the business, legal, and drafting issues that occur in each part of a contract
- PART III: turns to drafting rules for good writing and to techniques for enhancing clarity and avoiding ambiguity
- PART IV: details how to look at the contract from the client¿s perspective¿what does the client want to achieve and what risks does it want to avoid¿in order to find and resolve business issues
- PART V: shows students how to integrate everything they have learned: how to organize a contract, how to use precedents, and how to review and comment on a contract
- PART VI: addresses ethical issues that arise in drafting
- PART VII: provides additional exercises
- presents a five-prong framework for considering business issues that appear in almost every transaction: money, risk, control, standards, and endgame (Chapter 17, ¿Adding Value to the Deal¿)
- includes plentiful examples of well-drafted provisions, many based on commercial agreements
- provides exercises for use in or out of class, individually or collaboratively, including contract mark-ups, new drafting, and both combined into a single exercise
- integrates a single fact pattern throughout many exercises in the book¿the purchase of a jet by a ne¿er-do-well with significant financial problems¿and varying fact patterns relating to employment relationships and to assignment and delegation provisions.
- accompanied by a Teacher¿s Manual that includes notes explaining the answers to each exercise and answers to questions that students commonly ask.
- also accompanied by a website that provides all mark-up exercises that can be projected and walked through during class, a template for formatting, and multiple versions of one of the culminating exercises so that professors can use the version best suited to their classes
An author website to support classroom instruction using this title is available at http://www.aspenlawschool.com/stark |
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The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (2d Ed.) Bryan A. Garner, Jeff Newman, Tiger Jackson Provides a comprehensive guide to the essential rules of legal writing. Unlike most style or grammar guides, it focuses on the special needs of legal writers. answering a wide spectrum of questions about grammar and style both rules as well as exceptions. Also gives detailed, authoritative advice on punctuation, capitalization, spelling, footnotes, and citations, with illustrations in legal context. Designed for law students, law professors, practicing lawyers and judges, the work emphasizes the ways in which legal writing differs from other styles of technical writing. Its how to sections deal with editing and proofreading, numbers and symbols, and overall document design. |
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The Winning Brief: 100 Tips for Persuasive Briefing in Trial and Appellate Courts Bryan A. Garner Good legal writing wins court cases. It its first edition, The Winning Brief proved that the key to writing well is understanding the judicial readership. Now, in a revised and updated version of this modern classic, Bryan A. Garner explains the art of effective writing in 100 concise, practical, and easy-to-use sections. Covering everything from the rules for planning and organizing a brief to openers that can capture a judge's attention from the first few words, these tips add up to the most compelling, orderly, and visually appealing brief that an advocate can present.
In Garner's view, good writing is good thinking put to paper. "Never write a sentence that you couldn't easily speak," he warns-and demonstrates how to do just that. Beginning each tip with a set of quotable quotes from experts, he then gives masterly advice on building sound paragraphs, drafting crisp sentences, choosing the best words ("Strike pursuant to from your vocabulary."), quoting authority, citing sources, and designing a document that looks as impressive as it reads.
Throughout, he shows how to edit for maximal impact, using vivid before-and-after examples that apply the basics of rhetoric to persuasive writing. Filled with examples of good and bad writing from actual briefs filed in courts of all types, The Winning Brief also covers the new appellate rules for preparing federal briefs. Constantly collecting material from his seminars and polling judges for their preferences, the second edition delivers the same solid guidelines with even more supporting evidence.
Including for the first time sections on the ever-changing rules of acceptable legal writing, Garner's new edition keeps even the most seasoned lawyers on their toes and writing briefs that win cases. An invaluable resource for attorneys, law clerks, judges, paralegals, law students and their teachers, The Winning Brief has the qualities that make all of Garner's books so popular: authority, accessibility, and page after page of techniques that work. If you're writing to win a case, this book shouldn't merely be on your shelf--it should be open on your desk. |
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Writing and Analysis in the Law Helene S. Shapo, Marilyn R. Walter, Elizabeth Fajans A standard-setter in American legal education, Writing and Analysis in the Law provides a guide to legal writing, focusing on the importance of clear organization in written and oral communications. Developed as a textbook for a first-year law school course, the book introduces law students to the principles of research, including analyzing legal authority in cases and statues. It discusses the structure and persuasive techniques of effective appellate argument, both in briefs and in oral presentation, and makes extensive use of illustrative examples and writing exercises, on topics such as memorandums, trial briefs, and oral presentations. Lucid, compact, and up-to-date, this work consistently draws acclaim in law schools across the country. Highlights of the fourth edition include new chapters on interviewing a client, counseling a client, and analyzing questions of law. |
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Manual of Style for Contract Drafting Kenneth A. Adams Written by a practicing corporate lawyer and authority on legal drafting, this new Second Edition will completely update its first edition published in 2004. The focus of this manual is not what provisions to include in a given contract, but instead how to express those provisions in prose that is free of the problems that often afflict contracts. This manual highlights common sources of inefficiency, dispute, and misunderstanding and recommends how to avoid them. It offers a level of practical detail not found elsewhere in the literature on drafting. |
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Legal Writing & Analysis, 3rd Edition (Aspen Coursebook) Linda Holdeman Edwards This concise text offers a straightforward guide to developing legal writing and analysis skills for beginning legal writers. Legal Writing and Analysis, Third Edition, leads students logically through reading and analyzing the law, writing the discussion of a legal question, writing an office memo and professional letters. The author then focuses on writing for advocacy and concludes with style and formalities and a chapter devoted to oral argument. The Third Edition features new material throughout on drawing factual inferences, one of the most important kinds of reasoning for legal writers, as well as additional examples on the book s companion web site. Among the features that make Legal Writing and Analysis a best-selling text : |