Why Use an Editor to Produce Court Documents?
How can an editor help produce court documents?
Consider the following statement of fact, prepared by a firm that makes a business of preparing statements of fact for law firms:
On the evening of July 20, 2000, Howard Greene (“Greene”) was watching television inside his house located in Columbia, South Carolina (the “City”).1 At about 6 p.m. that evening, Greene saw a City police car pull over outside the house. City police officer Michael Thomas (“Officer Thomas”) got out of the car and shouted a request to know who called the police. Officer Thomas then approached three persons in the vicinity and loudly asked who was smoking marijuana. The three persons told Officer Thomas that they were not smoking any marijuana.
Hearing the commotion outside, Greene came and stood in the doorway of his house to see what was happening. Upon seeing Greene, Officer Thomas walked straight to Greene and asked him who was smoking marijuana. Like the three bystanders, Greene affirmatively responded that he did not know. Insisting that he smelled marijuana on Greene, Officer Thomas ordered Greene to turn around and proceeded to handcuff him. Once the handcuffs were in place, Officer Thomas performed a search of Greene’s person. The only thing found by the search was $500. When questioned about the money, Greene responded that he had the cash because he planned on taking his three children out to Chuckie Cheese and to buy them shoes.
Officer Thomas then ordered a cadet officer, also present at the scene, to take off Greene’s shoes and to search them. The cadet followed Officer Thomas’s directive. At that point, Officer Thomas put Greene inside the police cruiser. Officer Thomas then requested Greene to escort him into Greene’s house, which Greene refused to do. When Greene went back up to his house to close the door, Officer Thomas was already inside. After searching Greene’s house, Officer Thomas returned to the police car and drove away with Greene still inside.
It’s not clear what happened. How did Greene get back to his house after he was put in the police car? Was he still handcuffed? We don’t know. It’s not clear. Nor is it clear why Greene was “still inside” the police car after he got out of it.
An editor would collect the facts and revise the above copy so it was both shorter, and more descriptive.
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But wait! Don’t you have to be an attorney to edit court documents? Well . . . it was an attorney who wrote the statement of fact, and an editor who noted its lack of precision. So, what do you think?
