Category Archives: Improvement

Manage your sentence length

What’s a good average sentence length for legal writing? I once asked a group of lawyers at a CLE seminar that question. “Thirteen words,” one lawyer volunteered. “Seven,” said another. Wow.

Writing about legal matters with an average of seven words per sentence isn’t realistic, is it? That means for every sentence of ten words, you’ve got to write one of four words to bring the average to seven. That would be tough, but the instinct is right. Steven Stark, author of Writing to Win, says the more complex the material, the shorter the sentences should be.

So what’s a more realistic goal? The experts say between 20 and 25 words:

  • below 25—Richard Wydick in Plain English for Lawyers
  • about 22—Enquist & Oates in Just Writing: Grammar, Punctuation, and Style for the Legal Writer
  • about 20—Bryan Garner in Legal Writing in Plain English

How do you know your average sentence length? You can program Microsoft Word to tell you. In Word 2010 and 2013, go to File > Options > Proofing and look for “When correcting spelling and grammar in Word.” Now check the box for “Show readability statistics.”

You’ll also be required to check the box for “Check grammar with spelling.” If you dislike running a grammar-check every time you run a spell-check, go into the grammar settings and uncheck as many boxes as you like. Tell Word to stop checking for all those grammar items—it gets many of them wrong anyway.

Now when you finish a spell-check, you’ll see a display that includes the average sentence length. Of course, the tool isn’t perfect. If you have citations or headings in your text, Word will think those are sentences—short sentences—and your average sentence length will be artificially low. To work around this problem, select a paragraph or group of paragraphs without headings or citations and then run the spell-check; do it three times in different places. This will give you a sense of your average sentence length.

If your average sentence length is in the 30s, or even the high 20s, you’re taxing your readers. Do a thorough edit for concision and efficiency. If your average sentence length is in the teens, well done. You’re pleasing your readers. And remember, average sentence length doesn’t mean uniform sentence length. You should vary your sentence length. Write some short sentences and some longer ones.

But how long is too long? We lawyers have a reputation for long sentences. It’s probably not all our fault. After all, the subject matter of most legal writing lends itself to qualifications, modifiers, asides, and lists—so we might be forgiven. Yet I’m sure we can do better. Here’s a suggestion: Decide on a maximum sentence length and promise yourself you’ll cut any sentence that goes above your maximum. For example, mine is 45. I’ve decided that when a single sentence I’ve written exceeds 45 words, it’s an automatic edit.

Of course, some gifted writers can create long sentences that are pleasant to read; they usually use long but perfectly parallel phrases in a series. Or they use lots of semicolons. It can work in literature. But for most of us doing legal writing, long sentences are hard to read and hard to follow. So avoid over-long sentences.

In managing sentence length and avoiding over-long sentences, it’s not practical to count words while you type. Instead, manage sentence length on the edit. As you read your writing, keep an eye out for any sentence that fills three or more lines of text or any sentence that just makes you tired. Use your cursor to select that sentence, and Word will tell you the word count at the bottom left of your screen. For me, if it’s more than 45, it’s an automatic edit.

So that’s the advice. For readable writing that doesn’t tax your readers, vary your sentence length, seek an average in the low twenties, and cut any sentence of 45 words or more.

_____

To comment on this or any other post, email me.

The biggest impediment

The biggest impediment to better legal writing isn’t the lack of quality instruction in law school.

It’s law practice.

Deadlines. Time limits. Conventions. Fear. Supervisor expectations. Local rules. Forms and templates. Money. Inertia. Complacency.

All these prevent lawyers from taking the appropriate time to polish their writing. For example, even if a lawyer has four weeks to write a brief, that’s not enough because the same lawyer has three other briefs, four memos, and eight letters to write at the same time, not to mention the 150 e-mail messages to read and respond to.

Revising, editing, and rewriting are what make mediocre writing good and good writing great, but lawyers don’t have enough time for them.

David Mellinkoff captured the nature of the busy law practice and its effects on legal writing:

Sometimes urgency forces precedence over everything else. Get it done. Get something out. We’ve got to file. This is a “rush.” The writer is under pressure to take shortcuts. This has become the normal environment of most legal writing, and is one of the principal reasons why so much of it is so bad.

David Mellinkoff, Legal Writing: Sense and Nonsense 116 (1982).

The unfortunate fact is that this kind of rushed approach often gets the job done—it’s often good enough or has to be. One reason it gets by is that many of us have been writing this way—under a deadline and without sufficient time devoted to polishing—since college:

Many young lawyers seem to have survived writing assignments in college and law school (with the exception of law-review writing) by turning in what were basically first drafts, lightly edited to fix glaring errors. They are unprepared to regard editing as a serious, laborious activity.

Stephen V. Armstrong & Timothy P. Terrell, Thinking Like a Writer: A Lawyer’s Guide to Effective Writing and Editing 298 (2003).

And so practicing lawyers continue to churn out mediocre or poor writing; the exigencies of modern life and law practice almost require it.

Don’t Rest on Plateaus

Are the legal-writing classes you had in law school the last writing training you’ll need for your career?

If you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, was a law-school class the last bankruptcy training you’ll need?

That’s your answer. Legal writing is like any skill or substantive topic: there’s always more to learn, and there’s always room for improvement. But sometimes, busy legal writers rest on plateaus. We produce good-enough legal writing, and we’re comfortable on that plateau, so we stay. Here’s some advice for moving on.

1. Admit you have room to improve. When I was a full-time lawyer, I thought I was a good writer, above average. Now I realize I hadn’t been that good. I’d been quite mediocre. I was poorly educated about the standards of high-level professional writing, and I was ignorant of my own limitations. Was I unique? Probably not. Many lawyers believe themselves to be good writers, above average within the profession, but I say this: The first step to becoming a good legal writer is to admit you have room to improve.

2. Get some references. Once you’ve admitted you have room to improve your writing—that you’re resting on a plateau—start learning. A great way to raise your writing IQ is to consult the experts. When you have a question about writing, don’t rely on half-remembered “rules” from high-school English. Look it up. But where? Here are two websites I like:

But if you’re serious about legal writing, you’ll need some reference books, and here are three I recommend:

  • The Redbook, by Garner
  • The Texas Law Review Manual on Usage and Style
  • Just Writing: Grammar, Punctuation, and Style for the Legal Writer, by Enquist & Oates

Your goal is to have reliable references handy to answer questions. Other professional writers consult writing references, and lawyers should, too.

3. Read writing books. If you’re serious about getting off that plateau, you’ll have to do more than consult references. You’ll have to study the principles of good writing and good legal writing. But how, when you’re busy? Set a goal to read one book on writing every year. Here are some I like

  • Lifting the Fog of Legalese, by Kimble
  • The Lawyer’s Guide to Writing Well, by Goldstein & Lieberman
  • Writing with Style, by Trimble.

These books are great sources of writing knowledge, and they’re also well written. Reading the best books teaches you writing and exposes you to good writing.

4. Practice what you learn. You’re reading about writing and you’re consulting writing references. Now practice what you’re learning. Of course, for any working lawyer, writing practice is part of the job: you’re writing all the time. Yet we tend to rest on plateaus—we write as we always have, with the same habits, the same limitations. (That’s why studying writing is so important. Practice without study is usually just repetition.) So experiment with things you’re learning. Try new techniques and master new approaches to writing.

5. Edit better. We all know editing is crucial to good writing. Most of us can’t produce high-quality writing in one draft (or even two). We must edit, so here are some suggestions for getting off the editing plateau.

Leave plenty of time, even though it’s hard to do. How much? One pro recommends half the time on a writing project. Debra Hart May, Proofreading Plain and Simple 46 (1997).

Use more than one technique when editing: Do you edit on the computer screen? That’s fine, but it’s not enough. Do some editing on a hard copy, too; we read and react differently to screen text and printed text. Do you read the text out loud? That’s great: you’re using your ears, not just your eyes, to help you edit. Now go further and have a trusted colleague read it and suggest some edits. Do you read the document in reverse, from the last sentence to the first? Good. This technique tricks your mind, so you’re not familiar with the text; familiarity leads to poor editing. Now read only the topic sentences. Next read the opening and closing paragraphs.

Mediocre writing becomes good writing only through editing.

6. Accept critique. Here’s the hardest part: seek and welcome critiques and candid suggestions for improving your writing. This one’s tough because it’s natural to be defensive about your writing—maybe even insecure. I know I am. But when I avoid critique, I don’t improve much. I rest on a plateau. So open yourself to honest critique. Find a trusted colleague, friend, or supervisor, someone whose judgment and writing you respect. Then ask for suggestions, and take them to heart. The best writers are open to critique.

Now move off that plateau.

_____

If you’d like to comment on this or any post, please email me. I’ve had to disable comments because of excessive spam. Sorry.

New book on legal writing

I just finished reading Sketches on Legal Style by Mark Cooney, and I loved it. Lots of practical advice in a readable, engaging book. I recommend it.

COONEY-SKETCHES

From the publisher’s website:

Who says legal writing is a dull subject? This collection of lively, offbeat short pieces explores legal style like no book you’ve read before. But be warned: you just might learn something while you’re smiling. Through a colorful cast of characters, learn how legal writers can use plain language and careful syntax to produce clearer, stronger, and more persuasive documents.

Will legalese devotee Ebenezer Scribe change his ways after receiving visits from four clarity-minded ghosts?

Will Colonel Ketchup’s passive-voice phrasing obscure whodunit?

Will Editor Man defeat his most formidable foe yet: a dense block of statutory text containing, among other things, a 142-word sentence?

And much more . . .