I was speaking at a meeting of appellate specialists and was asked a 2-part question something like this:

1. Are there any empirical studies showing that the quality of the writing in a brief has an effect on its success—does better writing win appeals?
2. And if there are no such studies, what’s the point of all the books, articles, and CLE talks about improving legal writing?

I’ll answer these questions by restating them as I would understand them. It’ll take a series of posts.

More to come.