4 Things About Legal Writing

There are 4 things about legal writing that makes it special: Words, Style, Resources and Time.

Words - If law is a language, then legal jargon is the kind of vocabulary that imparts personality to this language. Without jargon, it is sometimes impossible to identify something as legal. Legalese is no longer a form now, it is the content.

Style - Why is it that Justice Krishna Iyer uses a different style when he writes a column for newspapers? (Or did I get this wrong – Have I spotted a distinction that does not exist?). Many a times the audience decide the style of writing. A blog post is very different is style from a peer-reviewed journal publication. Your style can be human-readable (here is the human-readable version of a creative commons licence) or otherwise. What you write may be read by clients, lawyers, judges, students, managers and a variety of people who require to be addressed in a particular style.

Resources - Legal writing requires more than a fertile imagination to flourish. Unlike fiction, it requires verifiable resources and references. The resources can be statues, case laws, text books, treatises and the like. Your resource can greatly improve the quality of your writing.

Time - Legal writing is enriched when you do something other than plain writing – teaching, training, practice, counselling. Since most legal writers do something other than just writing to make a living, making time for writing becomes difficult. If you are in academia, there is so much to write and yet so little time to write. In practice, you do a lot of writing in the fire-fighting mode – filing suits within deadlines, drafting agreements on demand, sending written opinions to clients and many other things. Legal writing is a task mostly done for others. Apart from your Will, there’s hardly anything legal that you write for yourself.

These form the what, how, about and when of legal writing. Knowing these elements and learning how to manage them should make legal writing better.

Taking Writes Seriously

Let’s face it: there is no humour in legal writing. In his ‘farewell’ law review article 'Goodbye to Law Reviews', Professor Rodell explains why:

“Moreover, the explosive touch of humour is considered just as bad taste as the hard sock of condemnation. I know no field of learning so vulnerable to burlesque, satire, or occasional pokes in the ribs as the bombastic pomposity of legal dialectic. Perhaps that is the very reason why there are no jesters or gag men in legal literature and why law review editors knit their brows overtime to purge their publications of every crack that might produce a real laugh. The law is a fat man walking down the street in a high hat. And far be it from the law reviews to be any party to the chucking of a snowball or the judicious placing of a banana-peel.”

There is neither passion nor courage in legal writing. As Professor Rodell laments, “There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.”

Goodbye to Law Review is a must-read for anyone who would take writing seriously. Fat Man Law will try to see how that can be done without getting serious.