The Seven Deadly Sins of Legal Writing (ISBN 1934084042)

The Seven Deadly Sins of Legal Writing:
As part of full disclosure, first, the author represented me in the past; second, I consider him a close, personal friend. The Seven Deadly Sins of Legal Writing is a nugget of gold in a field not known for humor, self-criticism, or brievity. Lawyers and "laity" will be rewarded by reading this book. It offers self-improvement to the former and understanding of the law's traditional mind set to the latter, who are or will be clients. What are the "seven deadly sins of legal writing"? They are passivity, abstraction, adverbiage, verbosity, redundancy, speaking footnotes, and negativity. In 51 pages, the author identifies, explains, and provides a remedy for each. He offers interesting historical notes such as legal documents are long because lawyers were orginally paid by the word. This would possibly explain the adoption of the passive voice as it requires more words. Examples of "legalese" are provided at the end for readers to edit and improve based upon the useful rules they have read. The appendix contains the mock article from Laurence Sternes's "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" (circa 1760). It is "legalese" taken to extreme. Hopefully, reading this nearly incomprehensible legal tract will be a wake up call for lawyers to adopt clear, concise, precise, and active language in their future legal writings.

Excellent resource and not just for lawyers:
This book was extremely useful. I'm not a lawyer but I work with lawyers and also run my own non-profit business. In very logical and concise terms, the book points out the common flaws in legal writing, many of which we have come to accept as the norm. Of particular interest was the anecdote that lawyers used to be paid by the word; hence, their historic longwindedness. That goes a long way in explaining why legal writing is usually and unnecessarily so dense and inpenetrable. I recommend this book for anyone who works in law or does a lot of business writing. It has helped make my own writing more succinct and persuasive.