Tips and Books on Editing for Legal Writing
“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” –Dr. Suess
The author of The Cat in the Hat could teach a lawyer or two about brevity of legal prose. Trimming unwieldy legal writing down to size is part of the editing process. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. In Thinking Like a Writer: A Lawyer’s Guide to Effective Writing and Editing [Find it], the authors suggest a series of steps to the editing process:
- Edit for tone and length, with attention to your audience.
- Edit for clear organization.
- Edit for coherence of paragraphs, and for transitions within and between them.
- Edit for sentence clarity.
- Edit for grammar and punctuation.
- Proofread.
By approaching editing methodically, you improve the readability of your legal writing. And in case you think good writing is just about style, check out Face It – Bad Legal Writing Wastes Money from Lawyerist.com.
You can find books on legal writing and editing in AO66. Two more to note:
