Whether you are writing a brief, a research memorandum or a client report, what you write, and how you write it, communicates your ideas to your audience. Are your sentences wordy and rambling, or crisp and to the point? Judges have full dockets to manage and countless briefs to read. Your clients and your colleagues are managing a multitude of cases. Why make them read more than they must? This article offers a few quick tips to identify, and then correct, verbosity in legal writing: (1) avoid using phrases when you can write effectively with a single word; (2) use the active voice; (3) tell your reader the most important point at the beginning; (4) use clear and simple sentence structure to convey even complex ideas; and (5) leave time for editing.
Eliminate Unnecessary Words
To create tighter prose, eliminate every unnecessary word, and chose your words wisely. Review each sentence to determine whether it can be shorter and more direct. Some words signal that you can write more effectively using descriptive verbs. For example, “of” may indicate that you are using a noun when a stronger verb form is available, or that the possessive is appropriate. Consider revising “analysis of” to “analyze,” or “substitution of” to “substitute.” Also, “the opinion of the court” can simply be “the court’s opinion.”
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