Category Archives: Law Practice

Incorrect citation spacing that looks correct

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Question

Professor,

I am proofreading a paper my boss is submitting for a CLE talk. The paper must be in a 2-column format with full justification. In citations, my boss puts 2 spaces where there should be 1 space, like this:

123  F.3d  456

In case you can’t tell, here’s a clearer version:

123[space][space]F.3d[space][space]456

Is this okay?

Answer

I’ve never heard of that being done, but I am aware that full justification can cause the spacing in citations to look wrong. You didn’t say this, but what must be happening is that when your boss uses 1 space between the volume number and the reporter name and 1 space between the reporter name and the page number, the full justification will sometimes squeeze it together, and it will look like the author omitted the necessary space. Your boss puts in 2 spaces, so it will always look correctly spaced.

I say it’s fine.

Of course, whether you use 1 space, 2 spaces, or no spaces in a citation absolutely cannot affect the authority, the substance, or the analysis. But this confirms that lawyers will judge you on your citation form.

I’ve written about this topic in my book Better Legal Writing. I call this idea—that lawyers will judge your competence by something as unimportant as the spaces in your citations—the tyranny of the inconsequential.

I’ll post an excerpt on this blog.

My new book with colleague Kamela Bridges

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I’m pleased to announce that my new book with co-author Kamela Bridges is available from Aspen Publishers and Amazon:

Writing for Litigation by Kamela Bridges and Wayne Schiess

My friend and colleague Kamela Bridges is a 10-year legal writing teacher and a former litigation partner at a major Texas law firm. The expertise and experience she has poured into this book make it unique—there is no other book as focused on practical litigation-writing skills.

Also, I contributed some writing advice.

Does the quality of writing matter? Answer 2

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Are there any empirical studies showing that the quality of the writing in a brief has an effect on its success?

In general, the answer is no, but I’d like to highlight another important article on a related subject.

The author asked judges to choose which of two versions of a legal argument they considered more persuasive. Half the judges chose between a traditionally worded (legalese) argument and a simpler, plainer (plain English) version. The other half chose between the legalese version and a version that used first person, contractions, and so on (informal). The study collected responses from trial and appellate judges in state and federal court and sorted results by those criteria and by age, experience, sex, and geographical setting (rural or urban).

Some results:

On average, judges considered the plain-English version more persuasive than the legalese version 66% to 34%. Federal appellate judges chose the plain English version 77% to 23%.

On average, judges considered the informal version more persuasive than the legalese version 58% to 42%. Female judges chose the informal version 83% to 17%, and rural judges actually chose the legalese version over the informal version 55% to 45%.

The full article is worth reading, and I’m pleased to say that I helped the author with the project when he was a law student.

Sean Flammer,  Persuading Judges: An Empirical Analysis of Writing Style, Persuasion, and the Use of Plain English, 16 Legal Writing 184 (2010).

Does the quality of writing matter?

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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.