Real violence is committed in historiography, archives of the legal system, media coverage, manipulation of social contracts, and control of information. Votes: 1 1. Be careful not to quote excessively; Paraphrase whenever possible. New law students sometimes mistakenly believe that they should always quote the words of a judge. After all, according to the reasoning, the judge must know how best to express the law. However, excessive citation is a poor substitute for analysis. Your job as a lawyer is to analyze precedents, not just repeat them. Therefore, your letter should explain to your reader why and how a precedent is important to your client. You cannot fulfill this important interpretive function simply by chaining quotation marks. In addition, the sequence of case citations and secondary sources tends to result in choppy and incoherent text.

It`s usually best to use your own words so that the text you`re writing has a logical progression and consistent style from sentence to sentence. Inertia, incompetence, status, power, cost and risk are an impressive set of motivations for keeping German legal. Their tenacity should not be underestimated. However, one remark is in order. These motivations have no intellectually or socially acceptable justification; They amount to claims of naked self-interest. Robert W. Benson, Professor of Law, Loyola Law School “There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is his style. The other is its content. I wrote small stories here and there, then bigger ones. Some were even written for money.

I signed up for a writing class and slipped my first assignment onto a yellow notepad into a partner`s desk while he read my memo. Voice: 1 When I read a book I liked, I would take a pen and one of my father`s legal notepads and rewrite it from memory as if I had thought of it myself. It was a clear sign that I wanted to get involved in writing, even though it was like that at the time. Voice: 1 Here`s my favorite quote about writing in general: “Every lesson that English students and writing teachers try to teach and that great writers exemplify is turned upside down in legal writing.” 6. If you must use block quotation marks, make sure to use indentation and single space. Quotation marks of 50 words or more should be approximately half an inch indented at the left and right margins. They must be entered in a one-space format, and the citation for the quote must be two lines removed from the end of the quote and placed in the original left margin. Do not put such a quote in quotation marks: the reader will know that it is a quotation because you have indented it. However, if there are citations in the blocked citation, use quotes around those internal citations. Here`s an example of a properly blocked quote of 50 words or more. What I do is write stories about women who care about justice.

They are women who reflect on the difference between right and wrong, what is legal and illegal, ethical and unethical, moral and immoral. Votes: 1 Most legal texts are horrible. Fred Rodell, dean of Yale Law School, before most of us were born, was right when he said, “There are two things wrong with most legal writing. One is his style. The other is its content. It was in a fascinating article, Goodbye to Law Reviews, which should be classified as a reading for all law students. Judge Mark P. Painter, Legal Writing 201 But don`t give it to a lawyer`s clerk to write down, because he uses a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand. Cervantes Why I find Louis Brandeis so exciting and inspiring because he teaches us – good legal writing is not a matter of taste, it is a matter of connection with fellow citizens and democratic education. Votes: 3 “Lawyers should recognize a professional obligation to wage war against bad legal writing.” Use quotation marks only for quotation marks – if the language is particularly strong or needs to be precise. In contrast, indirect quotes summarize or report what someone said.

Really, I never thought I was writing legal thrillers, and I still don`t think I would. I write stories about women. Voice: 1 person has always heard voices. Sometimes they are called shamans, sometimes they are called insane, and sometimes they are called novelists. I still feel lucky to live in a culture where writing novels is legal and not considered a pathology. Votes: 1 person reads legal texts differently. When you are at the heart of a legal argument, each step is a step in the argument. The judge will see all the holes. If you do that in fiction, it`s too long and boring.

Votes: 3 [Simple language] is or should be as accurate and precise as traditional legal drafting. It is much clearer. It`s usually shorter and faster. It is highly preferred by readers. This would significantly improve the image of lawyers. Professor Joseph Kimble responds to criticisms of plain language 3. Quote words with a particular meaning or eloquence. From time to time, we come across a sentence or phrase that is so well written that it would be almost criminal to paraphrase it. Other sentences may have become part of the tradition of legal writing, and to the informed reader, a paraphrase would seem silly. These phrases are rare, but if you find them, feel free to quote them. They can be particularly effective in the context of a brief or brief being prepared for a court. Sometimes we would lose the effectiveness of the quote if it did not remain autonomous.

In this case, the general rule against freestanding quotes should be ignored. Here are a few examples. 5. Try to avoid quotation marks of 50 words or more. Many readers skip quotes because they are looking for explanations of the law rather than simple reprints. Do not use quotation marks unless (i) there is simply no other way to write what you are trying to convey (extremely rare) or (ii) the words are so eloquent that paraphrasing them would seriously undermine the persuasion of your text. Un beso legal nunca vale tanto como un beso robado Votes: 3 Guy de Maupassant It is not surprising that the authors of these famous words are Justices Harlan, Holmes and Brandeis. Along with Justice Cardozo, Chief Justice Marshall and perhaps a few others, they are considered the legends of American legal history. In persuasive writing, it never hurts to quote a legend. It should be noted that Justice Brennan used the abbreviation “Sec.” in the above notice.

Justice Brennan is considered one of the great judges of the century; Here, however, he should have spelled out the word “section.” (See the section of this text on abbreviations.) “It is repugnant to have no better reason for a state governed by the rule of law than the fact that it was established in the time of Henry IV. It is even more repugnant when the grounds on which it was established are long gone, and the rule is merely a blind imitation of the past. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Way of the Law, 10 Harv. 457, 469 (1897), cited in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 199 (1986) (Blackmun, J., different). Capitalization of the first letter of a direct quotation if the material cited is a complete sentence, but not if the material is a sentence fragment. The quotation marks represent the language quoted or spoken. Here are some guidelines for use: 8. If you incorporate quotes into your own sentence, make sure the result is a grammatically correct sentence.

If you add someone else`s words to your own to form a sentence, the combined product should be grammatically correct. To determine if the sentence is grammatically correct, briefly ignore the quotation marks and ask yourself if the sentence would be correct if all the words were yours. Otherwise, you`ll either have to rewrite the part of the sentence you created, or delete the quoted material and use a paraphrase. – Richard Posner, “Goodbye to the Blue Book,” 53 University of Chicago Law Review 1343, 1349 (1986). Explanation: The second example is more desirable because it renders the background point with much fewer words. In addition, over-reliance on citations from older sources can result in a text that seems archaic. Periods and commas are enclosed in quotation marks, including single quotation marks. 7.

Use a comma after “said”, “declared”, “exclaimed” and similar terms when entering a quotation. In other cases, add the word “it” and don`t use a comma. It is sometimes difficult, as with the word “inmate” in the second example below, to determine whether it is acceptable to use an introductory term with a comma (such as “said”) instead of an introductory term with the word “that” (such as “wrote that”).