The Daily Beast is running a Q&A with Richard Posner called “How I Write.”
Judge Posner is a brilliant and prolific writer. As a person who writes for a living, I was naturally intrigued. Also, I picked up the link from U of R Professor Kevin Walsh‘s Twitter feed (@kevincwalsh).
Longtime readers have suffered through my various thoughts, hangups, and neuroses about legal writing.
Prime among them is a frustration with the way lawyers confuse personal attacks with effective advocacy.
By way of example, I’m reading through the record in an appeal right now.
It has taken me less than 2 docket entries to get
One of the side benefits of my job is that every now and then, for reasons I can’t begin to understand, legal-writing books just show up in the mail. Sometimes they come to me, and sometimes they go to our librarian. Either way, I am compelled to drop everything I’m doing to read them immediately.
There’s too much going on this week to focus on work, so please indulge me if this post strays a little off topic.
On television, we welcome back the two best shows going, Mad Men and the absurdly NSFW Game of Thrones.
Over shady internet streams, we get to watch an uber-talented U.S.
I had just agreed to give a talk on legal writing when I came across this post on the Appellate Record, discussing the Fifth Circuit’s recent opinion in Sanches v. Carrollton Farmers Branch Independent School District.
Sanches is a gem for two reasons.
First, it’s a completely absurd case. In a fact pattern that probably only makes sense in the Lone Star State, a complaint over failing to make the cheerleading team somehow festered into a Title IX/Section1983 action.
Second, as discussed below, Sanches single-handedly covers about half of the points for my presentation.
Here’s to God, and football, and Texas forever.Continue Reading Don’t Mess with Texis [sic]: Legal-Writing Lessons from a Fifth-Circuit Benchslap
A few weeks back, we reviewed Ross Guberman’s terrific new book, Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation’s Top Advocates.
Ross graciously agreed to do an email Q&A. If I’d moved faster, we could have scooped SCOTUSblog. But I was paralyzed with self-doubt; nothing will make you question your own writing faster
I gave up swearing for Lent.
This has crippled my ability to communicate effectively. To a staggering degree.
Opposing counsel in some (not all) of my cases now operate under the delusion that I’m “reasonable.” The associates I’m working with are left to conclude that their performance has improved dramatically–except for Finney, who knows what
I’ve been meaning to write a post on Ross Guberman’s new book, Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation’s Top Advocates, for a while now.
Ross, you’ll recall, wrote an analytical piece called “Five Ways to Write Like John Roberts,” which I bastardized in a post called “I am John
Mark Hermann has a terrific post on abbreviations in legal writing, “On Alphabet Soup (Hereinafter “OAS’)”. It’s well worth reading. The Curmudgeon can do no wrong.
Judge Posner has a brilliant article in the Yale Law Journal slamming The Bluebook–in his felicitious phrasing, “a monstrous growth, remote from the functional need for legal citation form.” Hat tip to Eugene Volokh and Ilya Somin, who discuss the article at the Volokh Conspiracy.
I commend Posner’s piece to you. It