Stop Wasting the Court's Time with Poor Writing

Geekery

The yang to Legal Geekery. We’re geeks. These posts prove it.

Legal

This is Legal Geekery — surely you were expecting some law-related posts.

News

Not necessarily law-related, but see what’s going on in current events.

podcasts

Especially fun for people on-the-go who want to download our shenanigans to their portable audio devices.

The Lighter Side

Law school would destroy us if we didn’t have a sense of humor about it.

Home » Advice

Stop Wasting the Court’s Time with Poor Writing

Submitted by Josh Camson on Wednesday, 7 October 20093 Comments

If you use vague, empty pieces of writing, you are wasting readers’ time. According to Harry Beckwith, author of Selling the Invisible, sending that message is the worst thing you can do. Although Beckwith’s book and message are not targeted at law students and lawyers, the idea is the same. When a court has to wade through pages of unnecessary legalese, passive voice, and unnecessary words to get to your main point, you are not helping your case. Make your sentences more concise to make your audience happy. Here are a few examples:

Good	Bad
then	at that point in time
by	by means of
to	to
because	for the reason that
since	in as much as
for	in favor of

Active voice is more authoritative and generally preferred in legal writing. At English Zone they have several nice charts so you can brush up on your active and passive voice. I have only embedded one below:

SIMPLE PRESENT and SIMPLE PAST

The active object becomes the passive subject.

am/is/are + past participle

was/were + past participle

Active: Simple Present

The movie fascinates me.
The movie bores Jack.

The movie surprises them.

Passive: Simple Present

I am fascinated by the movie.

Jack is bored by the movie.
They are surprised by the movie.

Active: Simple Past

The movie bored me.

The movie fascinated Jack.

The movie surprised them.

Passive: Simple Past

I was bored by the movie.

Jack was fascinated by the movie.

They were surprisedby the movie.

If you liked this article, please share it:

3 Comments »

Joshua Auriemma said:

Don’t forget though that passive voice has the effect of calling attention to objects rather than actors, which can be very appropriate in brief writing.

Ex. The knife was left under the waste basket.

Reply to comment

- 7 October 2009 at 12:17 pm

Stephen Carpenter said:

Actually, past tense passive voice is appropriate in many circumstances. Any circumstance where what happened is more important than who did it. On the other hand, it bothers some people. I have never really understood that, though I come from the belief that fixing problems is more important than fixing blame. Thats why I decided against going into law… the whole profession seems utterly at odds with that proposition.

Reply to comment

- 7 October 2009 at 12:50 pm

kris said: