Escaping Bad Writing Habits

I have finally read Bryan Garner's Legal Writing in Plain English. This wonderful book indentifies ways to escape so many abominable habits that have crept into legal writing. I'd never felt so excited to read a book on legal writing, but reading this one actually got me excited to write legal memoranda.

The catch in implementing some of the good ideas in Garner's book is that so many of those nasty writing habits have become convention. Lawyers tend to fear departing from convention in the midst of disputes, perhaps because they're overapplying the idea that in law, certain words sometimes operate as "magic words." Others simply think that the judge expects or even wants to see these bad habits -- they equate conventionalism with professionalism. They think, "if I use this phrase, I think I'm more likely to get what I want, even if there's a much plainer way of saying the same thing." I'm not saying that lawyers shouldn't use legal terms, but archaic idioms have no place in court papers and other materials when simpler language would do.

I suppose I'm not one to talk. In the last few weeks, I've written a few overly wordy research memos that were less organized than I would have liked. I don't have years of experience in drafting court papers. But I don't want to allow the years of writing experience I expect to get to be permeated with bad habits. I'm fortunate that relatively few of the bad legal writing 'conventions' out there seem to affect my firm. We can probably do better, though, and I know that I can do better personally. Thanks to the ideas and encouragement Mr. Garner provides, I'm excited to get to work on it.