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Full-Text Articles in Law
Numbers, Patrick Barry
Numbers, Patrick Barry
Articles
Numbers can be numbing. Depend too much on them to make your case, pitch your product, or tell your story, and you risk losing your audience. This essay offers a way to way to use numbers—both large and small—in a manner that is at once more compelling and more concrete.
Errors And Insights, Patrick Barry
Errors And Insights, Patrick Barry
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In Seeing What Other's Don't, the psychologist Gary Klein suggests that only focusing on reducing errors limits our ability to improve. We also need to spend time increasing insights. This short essay applies Klein's approach to writing and editing.
Rhetorical Repetition, Patrick Barry
Rhetorical Repetition, Patrick Barry
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When it comes to persuading judges, boardrooms, or even just co-workers, many lawyers shy away from repetition. They remain committed to the idea, often developed in college, that good writing is associated with having (and showing) a big vocabulary. They mistakenly think the best thesaurus wins. This essay explores that error and offers ways to correct it.
Corresponding Ideas In Corresponding Forms, Patrick Barry
Corresponding Ideas In Corresponding Forms, Patrick Barry
Articles
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that content always comes before structure. You don’t need to figure out all your ideas before you decide how to organize them. Much value can come from going in the opposite direction: first figure out how you are going to organize your ideas—their appropriate structure—and then determine the appropriate content. I often offer law students the following suggestion: “Once you find the right structure, perhaps it will be easier to find the right content.”
Uselessly Accurate, Patrick Barry
Uselessly Accurate, Patrick Barry
Articles
There is an accuracy that defeats itself by the overemphasis in details," Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote in his 1925 collection Law and Literature and Other Essays and Addresses. The problem hasn't gone away, as any reader of legal briefs, contracts, and memos can attest. This essay offers a few ways to help.
Good Sentences, Patrick Barry
Good Sentences, Patrick Barry
Articles
To write good sentences, you need to read good sentences. Skilled writers and editors know this, so they seek out good sentences wherever they can find them—the short stories of Alice Munro, the political essays of William F. Buckley, even well-crafted cartoons, speeches, and advertisements. They read not just with voracity but also with an eye toward larceny, always on the lookout for moves that they can learn and repurpose.
The Most Revealing Word In The United States Report, Richard Primus
The Most Revealing Word In The United States Report, Richard Primus
Articles
The most prominent issue in NFIB v. Sebelius was whether Congress’s regulatory power under the Commerce Clause stops at a point marked by a distinction between “activity” and “inactivity.” According to the law’s challengers, prior decisions about the scope of the commerce power already reflected the importance of the distinction between action and inaction. In all of the previous cases in which exercises of the commerce power had been sustained, the challengers argued, that power had been used to regulate activity. Never had Congress tried to regulate mere inactivity. In NFIB, four Justices rejected that contention, writing that such …
Shot Selection, Patrick Barry
Shot Selection, Patrick Barry
Articles
One of the more common pieces of writing advice in our post-Hemingway world is to keep sentences short. Experts on legal writing are particularly fond of this Position — and for good reason. Few judges look at the sentences that appear in briefs, memos, statutes, and contracts and say, "You know what each of those could use? More words." Professor Noah Messing does a particularly good job making the case for short sentences. Brevity, he explains, "reduces the risk that your writing will confuse or irk readers," especially given that "empirical studies show that writing verbosely makes writers sound dumber …
Paragraphing, Patrick Barry
Paragraphing, Patrick Barry
Articles
Consider treating the word paragraph as a verb. Think of it as something you can do well or poorly, with major consequences for your readers. Good paragraphers, for example, help readers. They make it easy to navigate and absorb information. They don’t flit around, hastily moving on to the next point before fully supporting their first. Nor do they get stuck for too long in one place. Instead, they give a lot of thought not just to the ideas but also to their arrangement—their shape, their balance, their pace.
Editing And Empathy, Patrick Barry
Editing And Empathy, Patrick Barry
Articles
Design begins with empathy.” I recently wrote that on the board during a class for students in the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. I thought it might help them write better briefs. I got the idea from Ilse Crawford, whose work as an interior designer can be seen all over the world—from airport lounges in Hong Kong, to fancy restaurants in London, to pear-shaped stools at IKEA. In Crawford’s view, “empathy is a cornerstone of design.”1 She thinks it is important to understand the spaces and products she creates from the perspective of the …
What We Still Don't Know About What Persuades Judges – And Some Ways We Might Find Out, Edward R. Becker
What We Still Don't Know About What Persuades Judges – And Some Ways We Might Find Out, Edward R. Becker
Articles
Over 25 years ago, in his foreword to the first volume of Legal Writing, Chris Rideout nailed it: legal writing as actually practiced by lawyers and judges needs to improve, “[b]ut more fundamental inquiry into legal writing...is needed as well.” The intervening decades have seen many laudable efforts on the latter front, as our collective scholarly discipline, then in its infancy, has matured. But one particular question that Rideout identified remains largely unaddressed by our discipline, although recent developments suggest a welcome increase in attention to the topic. Specifically, Rideout explained that our field did not know as much as …
The Words Under The Words, Patrick Barry
The Words Under The Words, Patrick Barry
Articles
The words lawyers choose can change the decisions people make. Psychologists call the mechanics of this change “framing.” They’ve found, for example, that more people will decide to have a surgery if they are told that the “survival rate is 90%” than if they are told that the “mortality rate is 10%” — even though a survival rate of 90% is exactly the same as a mortality rate of 10%. They’ve also found that having to pay a “surcharge” for using a credit card rankles people (especially people in the credit card lobby) more than if they were simply told …
Jack Sammons As Therapist, Jospeh Vining
Jack Sammons As Therapist, Jospeh Vining
Articles
Jack Sammons is well known as a pioneer in making the practice of law a field of academic study and teaching. He is also an original and penetrating analyst of law as such. This essay comments on his recent work, especially his putting the way we understand law and the way we understand music side by side and drawing out the parallels between them. Many will find his work a revelation.
What Is "Good Legal Writing" And Why Does It Matter?, Mark Osbeck
What Is "Good Legal Writing" And Why Does It Matter?, Mark Osbeck
Articles
Law schools face increasing pressure to improve instruction in practice-oriented skills. One of the most important of these skills is legal writing. The existing literature on legal writing contains various rules and suggestions as to how legal writers can improve their writing skills. Yet it lacks an adequate theoretical account of the fundamental nature of good legal writing. As a result, legal writers are left without a solid conceptual framework to ground the individual rules and suggestions. This Article attempts to fill the theoretical void in the literature by offering a systematic analysis of what it is for a legal …
The Ten Commandments As Secular Historic Artifact Or Sacred Religious Text: Using Modrovich V. Allegheny County To Illustrate How Words Create Reality, Ann N. Sinsheimer
The Ten Commandments As Secular Historic Artifact Or Sacred Religious Text: Using Modrovich V. Allegheny County To Illustrate How Words Create Reality, Ann N. Sinsheimer
Articles
In his essay, The 'Ideograph: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology', Michael Calvin McGee proposes that our system of beliefs is shaped through and expressed by words. We are consciously and unconsciously conditioned and controlled by the words we hear and use. Words carry ideology and convey and create meaning. Like Chinese characters, words are 'ideographs that 'signify' and 'contain' a unique ideological commitment', that is frequently unquestioned. McGee also suggests that by understanding that a single word can carry ideology and that ideology can be expressed in a single word, we are better able to expose and evaluate ideology …
Restyling The Civil Rules: Clarity Without Change, Edward H. Cooper
Restyling The Civil Rules: Clarity Without Change, Edward H. Cooper
Articles
Devoted fans and casual users of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure will feel mixed emotions on contemplating the Style Project that aims to rewrite every rule from Rule 1 to the end. Well they might. The Style Project's purpose is simply stated. The Civil Rules, created in an inspired fit of creativity, have been amended repeatedly over the years. Experience has shown that even inspired initial drafting could not avoid all misadventures and that amendments drafted by successive generations wielding different drafting tools do not always fit well. The present rules can be reworked to say more clearly what …
Some Examples Of Using Legal Relations Language In The Legal Domain: Applied Deontic Logic, Layman E. Allen
Some Examples Of Using Legal Relations Language In The Legal Domain: Applied Deontic Logic, Layman E. Allen
Articles
The fundamental concept of the LEGAL RELATIONS Language (LRL) is the recursively-defined notion of LEGAL RELATION (LR). As LR is defined here, there is an infinite number of different LEGAL RELATIONS, and LRL is a language for precisely and completely describing each of those infinite number of dfferent LEGAL RELATIONS. With its robust collection of dfferent names, one for each of the different LEGAL RELATIONS, LRL provides adequate vocabulary for (1) describing every possible legal state of affairs, (2) accounting for every possible change from one legal state of affairs to another, (3) representing every possible legal rule, and (4) …
Why I Write, James Boyd White
Why I Write, James Boyd White
Articles
It is a great honor for me to speak to you on this occasion, celebrating the publication of such an original and important book. It is a pleasure of a different kind as well, for Lash LaRue is an old and good friend, and I welcome the chance to join with others in congratulating him.
What's An Opinion For? (Special Issue: Judicial Opinion Writing), James Boyd White
What's An Opinion For? (Special Issue: Judicial Opinion Writing), James Boyd White
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The question the papers in this Special Issue address is whether it matters how judicial opinions are written, and if so why. My hope here is to suggest a way of elaborating the question that may provide the reader with a useful point of departure for reading the more extensive papers that follow.
Controlling Inadvertent Ambiguity In The Logical Structure Of Legal Drafting By Means Of The Prescribed Definitions Of The A-Hohfeld Structural Language, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Controlling Inadvertent Ambiguity In The Logical Structure Of Legal Drafting By Means Of The Prescribed Definitions Of The A-Hohfeld Structural Language, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Articles
Two principal sources of imprecision in legal drafting (vagueness and ambiguity) are identified and illustrated. Virtually all of the ambiguity imprecision encountered in legal discourse is ambiguity in the language used to express logical structure, and virtually all of· the imprecision resulting is inadvertent. On the other hand, the imprecision encountered in legal writing that results from vagueness is frequently, if not most often, included there deliberately; the drafter has considered it and decided that the vague language· best accomplishes the purpose at hand. This paper focuses on the use of some defined terminology for minimizing inadvertent ambiguity in the …
Translation As A Mode Of Thought, James Boyd White
Translation As A Mode Of Thought, James Boyd White
Articles
I think that Clark Cunningham's article, The Lawyer as Translator, is a wonderful piece of work, full of life and interest and originality. I especially admire: his ability to make vivid to the reader the ways in which languages do truly differ, and differ beyond our efforts to bridge them-as he shows when he imagines an attempt to translate our most common professional terms into Chinese; his recoguition of the kind of force that our languages have over our minds, both as we see the world and as we tell stories about it; his sense that what we think of …
Judicial Criticism, James Boyd White
Judicial Criticism, James Boyd White
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Today I shall talk about the criticism of judicial opinions, especially of constitutional opinions. This may at first seem to have rather little to do with our larger topic, "The Constitution and Human Values," but I hope that by the end I will be seen to be talking about that subject too. In fact I hope to show that in what I call our "criticism" our "values" are defined and made actual in most important ways.
One Use Of Computerized Instructional Gaming In Legal Education: To Better Understand The Rich Logical Structure Of Legal Rules And Improve Legal Writing, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
One Use Of Computerized Instructional Gaming In Legal Education: To Better Understand The Rich Logical Structure Of Legal Rules And Improve Legal Writing, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
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This article describes an innovation in legal education and speculates about its importance and effectiveness as an educational tool. The speculations about its potential use, however, are ones that each legal educator will be able to test individually to determine the effectiveness of this use of microcomputers to improve legal education. The computer software that permits the innovation to be used will be available to interested persons by the time that this article is published.
How Should We Talk About Corporations? The Languages Of Economics And Of Citizenship, James Boyd White
How Should We Talk About Corporations? The Languages Of Economics And Of Citizenship, James Boyd White
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My immediate subject in this Comment is section 2.01 of the American Law Institute's proposed Principles of Corporate Governance (Tentative Draft No. 2), which defines in general terms the proper objectives and conduct of a business corporation. My larger subject has to do with the adequacy and inadequacy of various languages in which corporate purposes and limits might be expressed, and especially with the limits of the economic language used in the ALI Draft.
The Need For Clear Structure In 'Plain Language' Legal Drafting, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
The Need For Clear Structure In 'Plain Language' Legal Drafting, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
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Language is not simple. To pretend otherwise is to mislead. In practice the aspect that is handled most ineptly in written legal materials is the structure. The focus of this article is upon structure and how to improve it. At the outset, let one thing be absolutely clear. In seeking to achieve clarity of expression, those who have no more to recommend than short sentences, simple words, and readability formulas are offering a cracker in circumstances where a full gourmet feast is gleaming in the chef's eye for those with the wit but to ask for the menu. To practice …
Normalized Legal Drafting And The Query Method, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
Normalized Legal Drafting And The Query Method, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
Articles
Normalized legal drafting is a mode of expressing ideas in statutes, regulations, contracts, and other legal documents in such a way that the syntax that relates the constituent propositions is simplified and standardized. This "normalization" results in documents that are easier to understand in the dual sense that they can be read faster and more accurately than corresponding documents that are not normalized. The query method is a technique for familiarizing learners with normalized drafting and providing practice in some of the easier aspects of doing it.
Formalizing Hohfeldian Analysis To Clarify The Multiple Senses Of 'Legal Right': A Powerful Lens For The Electronic Age, Layman E. Allen
Formalizing Hohfeldian Analysis To Clarify The Multiple Senses Of 'Legal Right': A Powerful Lens For The Electronic Age, Layman E. Allen
Articles
Careful communication is frequently of central importance in law. The language used to communicate even with oneself in private thought profoundly influences the quality of that effort; but when one attempts to transmit an idea to another, language assumes even greater significance because of the possibilities for enormously distorting the idea. Word skill is to be prized.
Better Organization Of Legal Knowledge, Layman E. Allen, Tomoyuki Ohta
Better Organization Of Legal Knowledge, Layman E. Allen, Tomoyuki Ohta
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The increasing need of legislatures to draft complicated statutes, e.g., the Internal Revenue Code, requires the development of new techniques for defining and communicating complicated policies both accurately and understandably. At present, these complicated statutes are expressed in long, convoluted sentences with frequent uses of exceptions and limitations. Current drafting technique, with its inadequacies, often hinders a comprehensive understanding of the policy being communicated and often fails to communicate the policy accurately. Moreover, with the voluminous increase of legal literature in recent times, legal researchers experience increasing difficulty in attempting to retrieve relevant judicial and administrative interpretations. The authors propose …
A Language-Normalization Approach To Information Retrieval In Law, Layman E. Allen
A Language-Normalization Approach To Information Retrieval In Law, Layman E. Allen
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An information retrieval system (as distinguished from a document retrieval system) is described for handling statute-oriented legal literature. The Normalized Sentence-Index Matrix (N-SIM) system suggested differs from more traditional retrieval systems for legal literature in three respects: (1) the categories used for classification are normalized versions of sentences from statutes, regulations, treaties, constitutions, case opinions, legal treatises, law review articles, and other documents in legal literature, (2) the classification system is hierarchial and open-ended to evolve with the literature through time, and (3) the organization of the file facilitates some analysis of the literature by computer. A sentence is expressed …