Peter Smythe, P.C.

In his book, Gar­ner on Lan­guage and Wri­ting, Bryan Gar­ner quo­tes seve­ral of the all-​too-​famous among us law­yers about their dis­dain for lega­lese. Here are a few gems:

Lega­lese is jar­gon. All pro­fes­sions have it. All pro­fes­sions use it as a subs­ti­tute for thin­king, and they all use it in a way that makes them appear to be supe­rior. Actually, they appear to be buf­foons for using it. The legal pro­fes­sion may be the worst of all pro­fes­sions in using jar­gon. It’s not neces­sary to com­mu­ni­cate that way. You’re really not com­mu­ni­ca­ting, and you’re not really thin­king. I do a lot of tele­vi­sion, and I do a lot of arti­cu­la­ting of posi­tions on behalf of clients. One of the rea­sons I’m asked to do that is that I unders­tand that the peo­ple on the other side of that camera don’t want you to speak like a law­yer. That’s a pejo­ra­tive term: tal­king like a law­yer is, to most peo­ple, tal­king in terms that sound boo­rish, con­des­cen­ding, and unin­te­lli­gi­ble. And law­yers need to be able to speak to peo­ple and for­get the jar­gon and for­get the lega­lese because you can com­mu­ni­cate the same thoughts without being swept up in the tech­ni­ca­li­ties of a par­ti­cu­lar issue. They want to know what you’re tal­king about. What do you mean? If you can’t express that, you shouldn’t wast people’s time. Theo­dore Olson

One, I think that the use of jar­gon is a crutch. I think it’s way of avoi­ding wor­king har­der – if you will, a way of avoi­ding put­ting your­self in the posi­tion of the rea­der. And I also think it shows an unfor­tu­nate lack of crea­ti­vity. If you’re not crea­tive in your wri­ting, I’m afraid you might not be crea­tive in your thin­king, and the best law­yers are the most crea­tive ones. James P. Clark

Lega­lese con­sists of empty words that don’t have any per­sua­sive cha­rac­ter. Spea­king plain English is just so much more per­sua­sive than loa­ding your brief up with the whe­re­fo­res and the hen­ce­forths. They’re just archaic and don’t really have any per­sua­sive qua­lity. It should all be about per­sua­sion, and I think law­yers get lost in their jar­gon in brief-​writing and in other aspects of advo­cacy. Bar­bara M.G. Lynn

Recently, a client asked me to file an elec­tive motion for him. I asked him about the grounds and he mum­bled some facts and said, “You know how to dress it up.” I didn’t dress it up. I reph­ra­sed a cou­ple of words around, but draf­ted the motion in plain English. The client called to com­plain about my wor­ding (I had emai­led him a PDF copy before lea­ving for the wee­kend), but before he got anywhere I told him that the court had gran­ted everything reques­ted in the motion. Without thin­king about what he was saying, he blur­ted out, “Why am I paying you all this money? Sheesh, I could have writ­ten that myself.“

You might also like:

• Trial Law­yers and Appe­llate Writing
• Issue-​Framing: The Upshot of the Appeal
• Crea­ti­ves and Law­yers: Oil and Water
• Cla­rity of Mind — Cla­rity of Argument
• iTu­nes: The Best Adver­ti­sing for New Coun­sel on Appeal