You've probably been baffled by all of the different texts and articles telling you how to write and in what way in the legal community. One source telling you one way and another leading you down another route, well below are the top ten tips to adapt your style and meaning of writing if you are writing for the legal community:
1. Always write short sentences because they are better than long ones. Remember that the topic sentence is the first sentence in each paragraph.
2. Do not use the passive voice because passive voice verbs are used without a subject and hence give the impression that you are not sure about it yourself. Moreover, they lack the punch. This means that the sentence "Donald did it" has a more impact than "the theft had been committed".
3. Your writing should be like your speech: simple, direct, unpretentious. Think about the flow of logic. Never try and write like the courts because Judges write badly - like most other legal writers. However, avoid contractions (don't use "don't"), slang, and jokes -- even if you talk that way, because the use of them opens up a certain amateurish aspect in writing. Never use pretentious legalisms such as "the case at bar" or "the instant case". Call it the Angelina case. The use of long words should be avoided when short ones will do.
4. Do not try and sell too hard. If you cannot persuade, do not bludgeon. Avoid using violent adjectives.
5. Have the courage to be dull if this is the price of being clear. If your ideas are interesting, they will carry the paper far better than a turn of phrase. Legal writing is essentially technical writing so do not try and be verbose. Suspect the use of the fine phrase or the fancy word. Use the same word to express the same meaning and use simple sentence structure.
6. Always be specific. Instead of "in recent years" try, "since 1980".
7. If you are using a specific tense then stick to it. Do subjects hold, or have they held? I do not care, so long as they only do one of those things. Of course, tenses can be used to reinforce a temporal sequence: courts had begun, developments ensued, the result will be.
8. I really believe in the use of a comma, whatever form of writing it may be. I believe that the use of a comma is very important in legal writing because legal writing is after all a form of technical writing. A penultimate comma works like this: "The four factors that affect good writing are lucidity, strong belief, construction, and attention to detail." The last item in this list is "attention to detail"; without the comma after "construction" it would be unclear whether the final clause, joined with and, was one item or two (maybe the author cannot count and there are really five items on the list?). The comma makes it clear.
9. Try and avoid the use of "etc." Using that is a crime.
10. If one wants to use quotes one can use them but should not probably more than one every five or ten pages unless doing close textual analysis of a particular case, statute, or regulation, in which case it may be essential to quote it at greater length. Remember that the average reader SKIPS the inset quote--so you need to provide a little summary of it afterwards which will allow.
Remember that it is always best to have a professional proofreader take a look through your work, checking that there are no mistakes, hiccups or grammatical errors when you submit it. Least you will want is your reputation damaged by having a huge mishap in your work that everyone else has noticed but you haven't.
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