Specific Legal Writing Tips: What to Avoid
| Author | John Hollander |
| Pages | 117-136 |
specific legal writing tips: what to avoid
chapter five
Specific Legal Writing Tips:
What to Avoid
are good habits in legal writing, so too
are there bad ones. e following sections identify style
errors that frequently arise among lawyers, both junior
and senior. Most of these occur because the legal writer
ignored what should be the number one rule — think of
the reader.
To persuade, lawyers should communicate, but they
should not annoy or distract. e sections that follow
focus on several possible sources of annoyance or dis-
traction:
• Accusations that appear to cloak the writer with
personal knowledge of the events
• Misuse of slang
• Use of fractured sentence structure
• Failure to state essential facts
• An email or text message sent hastily or in error
Lawyers constitute a thoughtful profession. At the
hourly rates charged by most lawyers in private prac-
tice, clients should expect accurate work at the very least.
With this in mind, read the next sections with an eye out
for whether these common errors apply in your writing.
If so, how should you adapt your practices to avoid them?
Avoid Personal Involvement
rules and guidelines, there is a major dif-
ference between creative writing and legal writing. Legal
writers must comply with professional standards, whereas
creative writers set their own standards. All lawyers are
aware that their communications are governed by the rules
of professional conduct: lawyers may not write known
falsehoods; they may not mislead intentionally; they may
not attribute words to someone who did not speak them;
they may not advance the cause of criminal behaviour. Un-
like creative writers, lawyers must comply with professional
standards before they consider the interests of their clients.
Thou shalt not bear false witness
rst rules that junior lawyers must learn is to
avoid the appearance of personal involvement. If your client
tells you that the other party acted improperly, you should
never accuse that party of anything. You may only say or
write what you know to be true, namely that your client has
told you something to that eect. Often lawyers encounter
a letter written by another lawyer who writes an accusation
directed to a party to the eect that “you did” something
controversial. In some cases, it is possible that the lawyer
can be forced to testify as to what personal knowledge led
to the accusation. at lawyer should not have written
those words without personal knowledge. erefore, the
lawyer has personal knowledge and is a potential witness.
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