Lawyers are often criticized for arcane and convoluted language. Not Andrew Berry (left), chairman of McCarter & English in Newark, N.J. He's interviewed in The Wall Street Journal Law Blog about the importance of clear writing and avoiding typographical errors. Says he:
“Do not ever for the second time give your senior (lawyer) a piece of writing with a typo or a grammatical mistake.”Such errors, he says, derail the lawyer's stock in trade: A smooth train of thought.
In addition, Berry urges young lawyers to read Antonin Scalia's new book on advocacy, especially the parts about the importance of writing well.
The dynamics of today's communications (IM, email, Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, text-messaging) augur against this, but Berry and the rest of us can dream, can't we??
1 comment:
I used to read a lot of Scalia's opinions. He used to craft beautifully constructed sentences. Sadly, these architectural achievements were often so dazzling it obscured Scalia's inability to construct an internally consistent logical argument. My opinion.
If you want a model for good writing, legal or otherwise, go into the NYTimes archives and look for anything written by Margo Jefferson, who proves over and over again that wonderful things can happen in print if you think before you write.
--Brian
Post a Comment