Preface

• Pages: 13-15

Z

xiii

Z

reface

This book began out of frustration.

Frustration at the turgid, pedantic, Latin-lled, jargon-ridden,

misspelt, ungrammatical, and inelegant writing that issues from

the pens and keyboards of lawyers, law students, and those who

come within their orbit (assistants can have an unfortunate ten-

dency to replicate the bad habits of those they work with).

My working title was Please Don’t Write like a Lawyer, but my pub-

lisher counselled against using that, in case it alienated the book’s

main audience. It nevertheless provides an accurate insight into

my motivation and method.

Why is legal writing so bad? People come to the profession

from various academic and other backgrounds, and early on they

feel as though they have been initiated into not only a mode of rea-

soning but also of writing: the art — or mystery perhaps — of law

is attended by its terms of art. These are a hodge-podge of words,

phrases, and habits of expression that have accreted over the cen-

turies, mixing Law French with Latin, the English of the early

modern period, memorable phrases from the case law, and dened

terms from statutes. Fluency with the lingo is seen, especially in

law school and the early years of practice, as a proxy for knowledge

of the law itself (whether this is true or not). Being a generally

conservative and cautious bunch, lawyers are reluctant to change

any wording they have learned or which practice has sanctioned,