Legal Writing Workshop

This workshop provides anyone in the legal profession (lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, legal scholars, translators, among others) with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. It encourages them to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process.

Course Objective

Legal writing sounds so complicated. And perhaps it was, once upon a time. Today, however, more and more documents are being written as plainly as possible and are becoming critical to our understanding of facts. Jobs, sales, public relations, fundraising, and even day-to-day satisfactions depend on our ability to communicate quickly, accurately, and succinctly.

Although much of business and social interaction takes place over the telephone or in person today, oral communication has not begun to replace the written word. The well-written document remains a staple of business success and one of the strongest connecting links between individuals.

Most of us are capable of writing an intelligible, convincing letter, but few of us have the time and energy to write the countless and diverse letters and documents that life seems to demand.

This course will provide students with useful, practical guidelines applicable to several different situations. The convenient, flexible approach presented in the course emphasizes a type of writing that is not only clear but - depending upon the circumstances - compelling, and personal.

Instructors will present comprehensive, versatile lists of words, phrases, sentences, and sample paragraphs, documents to analyze, cases to debate, and brainstorming activities allowing students to express themselves immediately on any topic in their own "voice" and style. Rich vocabulary will provide students with every expression relevant to their topics, whether they want to sound formal or casual, traditional or contemporary, businesslike or lighthearted, distant or intimate, they must be able to find the words for every writing occasion with increased speed, flexibility, and individuality.

Methodology and Class Dynamics

The aim of this course is twofold. Participants will be first presented with some legal vocabulary and language chunks which are most frequently encountered in legal writing. Thus, by interacting with very many hands-on, topic-based language-wise activities within the field of the law and the legal system, participants will build up their specialized legal repertoire. Moreover, stylistic rules shall be considered in a practical and experimental way for participants to get acquainted with distinct registers and appropriateness. Then paragraph developing techniques will be explored. Emphasis will be laid on the different text formats and types covering from all procedural instruments such as summonses, subpoenas and notices, through pleadings to the most intricate language used in court rulings or legislative pieces. Error analysis and packing and unpacking information exercises will result in a better understanding of writing pitfalls and how to avoid them. Guidance goes hand in hand with monitoring and supervision where the teacher takes the role of a facilitator who interacts with participants to encourage both acquisition and reinforcement. Monthly formal assignments and evaluation outcome will speak for participants’ steady progress. With this, participants will develop their writing skills at their most, reaching a writing standard that will pave the way for more effective communication.

Contents

Introduction

Why Some Lawyers Write Poorly
Does Bad Writing Really Matter?
Causes and Consequences of Bad Legal Writing
Lawyers’ Most Common Errors
Straight-forward, Easy-to-read Remedies to make your Writing Readable.

The Process of Writing

Ten Steps to Writing
Order and Disorder
Structure from Strategy and Purpose
Flow and Interruptions
The Length of a Document

Vocabulary

Legalese and Lawyerism: Latinisms, Pomposities, and Bureaucreatese
Tips for Simplicity

Usage

Clichés
Slang

Wordiness

Fuzzy Phrases
Negatives
Redundancies
Verbosity
Strings of prepositions

Pronouns and Sexism

Using "I"
Confusion of "That" and "Which"
Sexist language

Editing

Letting Your Sentence Tell the Story
Editing for Structure, Length, Clarity, and Continuity

Proofreading

Proofreading for Spelling and Typographical Errors, Bad Punctuation, and Consistency in Style
Acronyms and Initialisms

Adjectives:

- Uncomparable adjectives
- Adjectives as nouns
- Phrasal or compound adjectives

Problems with Adverbs:

Placement of adverbs; awkward adverbs

Ambiguity

Americanisms and Britishisms

Archaisms

Articles:

- Omitted before parties designation
- Wrongly omitted; Wrongly inserted
- Repeated

Citation of Cases

Correlative conjunctions:

- Neither...nor, either...or, both...and, although...yet, notwithstanding...yet

Dates:

- Order
- Month and Year
- Dates as Adjectives
- Dates written out
- In Contracts

Doublets and Triplets of Legal Idiom

Enumerations:

- First(ly), second(ly), third(ly)

Forbidden Words

Formal Words

Governmental forms

Legalisms and Lawyerisms

Legal Writing Style

- General Legal Writing
- Brief Writing
- Drafting
- The Language of Contracts
- Judicial Opinions
- Opinion Writing
- (i) Tense, (ii) Judicial Humor, (iii) Concurrences

Plain English:

- Plain English for Lawyers? Why is it important?
- General Drafting
- Jury Instructions

Popularized Legal Technicalities

Quotations:

- Use of Quoted Material
- American and British Systems

Rhetorical Questions

Statute Drafting:

- Shall and May in Proscriptions
- Tenses generally

Word beginnings and word endings

Legal Writing – Highlights

• Causes and Consequences of Bad Legal Writing
• The length of a document
• Legalese, Legalism, and Lawyerism
• Fuzzy Phrases, Redundancies, and Verbosity
• Sexist Language
• Letting your sentence tell the story
• Ambiguity
• Americanisms and Britishisms
• Archaisms
• Citation of Cases
• Dates
• Doublets and triplets of legal idiom
• Forbidden Words
• Governmental forms
• Brief Writing
• The language of contracts
• Opinion writing
• Popularized legal technicalities
• Quotations
• Rhetorical questions
• Statute drafting

Para recibir mayor información sobre nuestros servicios, por favor contáctenos vía e-mail a info@thetrcompany.com o telefónicamente al (54.11) 4896.2693 o al 4784.5445