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Great Legal Writing: Lessons from Literature

Great Legal Writing: Lessons from Literature

Author: Max Barrett
Publisher: Globe Law and Business
ISBN: 9781787429499
Published In: February 2023
Format: Hardback , 293 pages
Jurisdiction: International ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Description
Contents

Details

Legal prose is often a more pedestrian venture than a novel or a poem. However, even the pedestrian can be done well. The views of the professional writers considered in this book identify how lawyers can write legal prose well, and sometimes even beautifully.

This book provides key lessons on legal writing that can be gleaned from various leading authors of the past and brought to bear in crafting more polished legal texts. Among the great authors considered are Joseph Conrad, Guy de Maupassant, E.M. Forster, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Louis Stevenson and Virginia Woolf. Central themes identified are:

Legal writing should never be too difficult to understand;
Great writers have much to teach the legal writer;
Good writing requires hard work;
Professional jargon is generally best avoided; and
The truth is always pure, often simple, and generally best expressed in plain English.

This book contains invaluable guidance to help all those involved in legal writing to hone their writing skills, while providing an engaging tour through the works of great authors from the past.

All after-tax author royalties from this book will be donated to the Ukrainian relief efforts of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.

Foreword

1. Lawrence - On morality, aesthetics and other matters

1. Reading the whole text

2. Didacticism and aesthetic

3. Moralising

4. Intrusion of author

5. Intelligence, coherency and honesty

Some propositions

2. Besant - On the ‘laws’ of fiction and other matters

1. Simple and faithful rendition

2. Sympathy and writing

3. Suppression and reticence

4. Elevation of thought

5. The ‘laws’ of fiction

Some propositions

3. Conrad - On bringing light to truth, and other matters

1. Bringing light to truth

2. The thinker, scientist and artist

3. Law and the emotional/moral atmosphere

4. Pursuit of truth

Some propositions

4. Crawford - On moralising, flippancy and other matters

1. Definition of novel

2. Purpose of novel

3. Impact of novel

4. Moralising works

5. The flippant and colloquial

6. Self-discipline

7. Brevity, simplicity, etc.

8. Producing the illusion of real life

9. Realising author’s conception

10. Foreign language

11. Avoidance of digression

12. Life experience

13. Writing for amusement

14. Ethics

15. Sympathy

Some propositions

5. De Maupassant - On honesty, simplicity and other matters

1. Individual originality

2. Expected forms

3. Text and truth

4. Objectivity

5. Exactness and carefulness

6. Simple vocabulary

Some propositions

6. De Quincey - On style and other matters

1. ‘Style’ defined and the English experience

2. Why style is important

3. Writing and speech

4. Careless style

5. Media and language

6. Unduly long or conditional sentences

7. Foreign language

8. Mechanical and organic dimensions of style

9. Punctuation

10. Footnotes

11. Repetition and brevity

Some propositions

7. Forster - On the text as story, and other matters

1. Text as story

2. Engaging the reader

3. Text and voice

4. Impartiality and omniscience

5. Mystery and suspense

6. Concluding section

7. Preachers and prophets

8. Patterns in prose

Some propositions

8. Hardy - On Sincerity, Originality and Other Matters

1. Sincerity

2. Originality

3. Detachment

4. ‘Laws’ of writing

5. Slipshod writing

Some propositions

9. The Hawthornes - On theme, tone, truth, the task of writing and other matters

1. Plainness and simplicity

2. Tone

3. Moral aim

4. Writing not a formulaic process

5. The steps to writing

6. Art and imagination

7. The power of writing

8. Transcendent text

9. The active and passive writer

10. Great cases and great texts

11. Legal texts as national literature

12. Sensibility and enlivenment

13. Condescension and children

14. Writing makes the writer

Some propositions

10. Hazlitt - On pedantry, insight, jargon and other matters

1. Pedantry

2. Insights offered

by written text

3. Jargon

4. Foreign language

Some propositions

11. James - On the art and duty of writing, humour and other matters

1. Art and fiction

2. Task of writer

3. To amuse or instruct?

4. Super-abundant judgments

5. Role of novel

6. Definition of novel

7. Reality as virtue

8. Types of novel/prose

9. Artistic freedom

Some propositions

12. Stevenson - On composition, pattern, sound and other matters

1. Word-choice

2. Composition

3. Style

4. Key elements of style

5. Pattern

6. Sound in prose

7. What to include or omit

Some propositions

13. Trollope - On literary quality, truth and the ‘rules’ of writing

1. Literary quality

2. Truth and selection

3. ‘Rules’ for writing novels

Some propositions

14. Woolf - On quality in writing, ‘rules of writing’ and other matters

1. Writing has not improved

2. Lifelessness

3. Adequacy of form

4. Truth to mental conception

5. The ‘proper stuff’ of prose

6. Focus on essential detail

7. ‘Rules’ of writing

8. Long words and opening words

9. Essay-writing suggestions

10. Know how to write

11. Fuse learning and prose

12. Avoid scolding

13. Careless writing

14. Dull, dead, prolix text

15. Truth

16. Sobriety and seriousness

17. Ornament

18. Length

19. Enfolding the reader

Some propositions

Afterword: Towards a code of good legal writing

1. Active/contemplative/reserved author

2. Brevity, clarity, simplicity

3. Carefulness/carelessness

4. Central Idea/theme

5. Civility

6. Colloquialism/flippancy

7. Communication of thought

8. Concision

9. Condescension

10. Detachment

11. Didacticism

12. Digression

13. Emotion/empathy/sympathy

14. Engaging writing

15. Ethics

16. Exactness/precision

17. Experience

18. Footnotes

19. Form

20. Grammar

21. Humour/amusement

22. Hesitancy

23. Illusion

24. Language/vocabulary

25. Latin/legal jargon

26. Literary quality

27. Moralising/morality

28. Observation

29. Originality

30. Personality

31. Quotes

32. Reading

33. Rhythm

34. Selection

35. Sound

36. Storytelling

37. Style

38. Tone

39. Transcendence

40. Truth

41. Understatement

42. Voice

Appendix: Writing for the young and vulnerable

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