Conclusion

AuthorNeil Guthrie
Pages261-261
261
chapter five
onclusio
A. DON’T BE SMART
A f‌inal piece of advice. Lawyers are experts, and that expertise is
hard-won. Don’t f‌launt it, though — a point that was made in a good
article in the Harvard Business Review.1
There are two risks in pitching things at too high a level. The f‌irst
is that you alienate your audience by a show-of‌fy display of technical
information they neither understand nor care about (for example,
the dif‌ference between therefor and therefore). You want to avoid
being preachy.
The other risk is that you may have ventured into territory which
you don’t know well, and have got it wrong. Some clever reader is
bound to catch you out. A thin veneer tends to chip of‌f easily.
I have probably gone both ways in my time, but I hope not in
these pages.
1 Liane Davey, “Stop Trying to Sound Smart When You’re Writing” Harvard
Business Review (5 October 2015), online: https://hbr.org/2016/10/stop-trying-
to-sound-smart-when-youre-writing.

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