Set in Style

One of the themes of this blog is that — even though lawyers are authors and law firms are publishers — they don’t follow some of the most basic rules of publishing.

Case in point. Ross Buckley, professor of law at the University of New South Wales and editor of a series of books on global trade and finance, has written this article about how law students make such lousy editors.

His gripe? The editors of law reviews do something that professional editors wouldn’t dare do — a substantive edit of an academic article.

Buckley talks of the “horror” he experienced when he reviewed “the edited manuscript of my first article accepted by a U.S. law review.”

The editors had rewritten much of it, to “improve the readability and clarity of expression.” It was perhaps a tad easier to read. It was also wildly inaccurate.

It should be easy enough to end his problem. Just remind the law students who function as “editors” of law reviews that editing an article must be done with the same sort of care used to edit a legal brief. Put simply, don’t change a danged thing unless it’s an obvious misspelling, or a singular/plural disagreement, or a dangling modifier, or some such. Anything else the editor might question should be flagged (for the author’s review), but not changed.

That’s how the pros do it.

Here’s an idea: See how student-editors in other technical fields are trained. See how mathematicians and engineers and doctors train their student-editors. See if they aren’t trained to take greater care than the law school’s student-editors.

. . . but I figured the judge had lots of time on his hands and would rather read 30 pages than 20.

____________
Evan Schaeffer, publisher of the Illinois Trial Practive Weblog, offers some right good advice to lawyers writing briefs.

Judge Gary Farmer’s uncommon opinion in Funny Cide Ventures, LLC v. The Miami Herald Publishing Co.

Who says judges have to write their opinions as if they were trying to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem?

There’s an old saying: “Things aren’t always as they appear.” When it comes to your law firm’s Web site, that’s something to keep in mind.

Why bother to mention it? Because I keep running into law firms that think their Web site looks just fine — and to them, maybe it does — but to others, it looks like it needs some serious attention.

Consider the following snippet of copy from a site that’s well done:

The copy is very readable, don’t you agree?

Now, consider a snippet of copy from a site that’s half baked:

Not so readable, is it?

I’m not going to get into a bunch of technical details about cascading style sheets, measures of type size, line heights, and such. I’m not even going to bother to mention that the first snippet is set in Verdana — a very good choice for body copy displayed on-line — and the second is set in Helvetica — a terrible choice for body copy presented in any manner.

What I am going to point out is that the publisher of the second snippet, unlike the publisher of the first, didn’t bother to make sure that its copy was readable on most computers (e.g., most screen sizes and resolutions, most browsers, most operating systems, etc.)

Here’s the point: when you publish hard copy, you can be sure how it looks to everyone, everywhere. When you publish a Web site, you have to take precautions to make sure your copy is readable to all. It might look just fine on all the computers your firm owns, but it might not look that way on another computer, with another operating system, and another browser, etc. You have to do some testing to have any assurance that your site looks just fine to most.

Consider a firm that claims it really understands technology. It claims it’s fantastic when it comes to e-discovery. But failing to apply due diligence to its Web site can make those claims seem downright silly.

Law firm marketing consultant Larry Bodine offers this interesting idea to hungry firms — put a price tag on your publications. Other professional services firms do it. So, why not law firms? The idea isn’t to make money from the pubs; it’s to make them seem valuable by making them seem scarce. From the post:

If a partner at your firm has given a speech entitled, “The Top 10 Ways Business Get Into Legal Trouble,” I recommend the firm reduce it into writing, save it as a PDF file, and sell it on the firm Web site. Putting a price on it conveys that the information is really worth something. Plus it creates scarcity — the document isn’t some promotional piece potential can get anywhere — it’s available only on the law firm Web site.

Of course, any firm that embraces this idea had best be careful. It’s one thing to charge people for a well-written piece that’s informative and seems as if it were crafted with some care. It’s quite another to charge people for stuff like this or like this.

Look! You wouldn’t want one of your attorneys showing up for an important client meeting with dirty fingernails. And you know exactly why.

Then why in the world would you publish a document that makes it seem as if you could care less about how your firm appears — and not just to one potential client, but to so many of them?

Consider the following excerpt from an article published by one well-known firm:

Not so easy to read, is it? That’s because there’s not enough contrast between the copy and the background.

Note: And when the article is printed on a black & white laser printer (e.g., you’re going to read it on the plane or on the train), it’s not readable at all. That, despite the fact that it could easily be set to print just fine (i.e., black type on a white background) on a typical printer.

An effective tool for making sure that foreground/background color combos offer good contrast (read legibility) is offered by the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium.

Use it. And consider this. A law firm that says it’s very knowledgeable about ADA compliance should show that it’s thinking of people with limited visibility, like color blind law school students using the Web to search for summer jobs.

This site will analyze your firm’s site to make sure that its “contrast is high enough for people with visual impairments.”

____________
Now, consider the following excerpt from a client alert published by another well-known firm:

Once again, the reader has to struggle.

I know what you’re thinking — all you have to do is zoom in on the copy, and it will be so easy to read, right? Wrong! The client alert is a GIF file, so zooming in on it just leads to this:

If you want your firm to appear sharp — like it’s the sort of firm that pays close attention to even the smallest detail — then make sure its publications look sharp.

____________
I suppose this is as good a place as any to note that very many of the largest, best-known firms don’t bother to review their own Web sites.

Lawyers don’t bother to review their firms’ sites to make sure the articles they’ve written look like they’re set in style. Managing partners don’t bother to make sure that their firms’ sites make a good impression, and that lack of concern has the power to leave potential clients with the impression that — despite what the firm says — it certainly doesn’t pay attention to detail (and the partners don’t review what their associates are doing).

A firm’s site can do the firm just as much harm as good. When potential clients review a firm’s site and see that the firm publishes documents that can’t be read, they’re not going to be favorably impressed.

Would you be impressed with a firm that doesn’t bother to review its own work?

An excerpt from standard 401 of the ABA’s Standards for Approval of Law Schools:

The faculty shall possesses a high degree of competence, as demonstrated by its education, experience in teaching or practice, teaching effectiveness, and scholarly research and writing.

Every writer needs an editor, and lawyers are certainly no exception. Given the nature of their work, plus the potential cost of a misplaced comma, or a which that should have been a that, lawyers have a much greater need for editors than most other writers.

In a recent post, I discussed the tendency of many attorneys to put too much verbiage between modifiers and their objects — a tendency that burdens readers, and for no good reason.

I’ve got a recommendation for those attorneys, which is just perfect for any and all attorneys who think that a sentence such as the instant one is well written and likely to impress those who have better things to do with their time than spend it reading far more words than are absolutely necessary to get the point across.

My recommendation: read an article published in a quality newspaper (e.g., the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal), or a quality magazine (e.g. Law Firm Inc. or American Lawyer) and notice how professional writers (e.g., journalists) put non-restrictive clauses (e.g., those that begin with which preceded by a comma) so very close to their objects.

Then, open up a memo you wrote. Find each instance of which (preceded by a comma) that introduces a non-restrictive clause, and then find the object of that clause. Count the number of words between the object and the clause. Compare that to the number of words between a non-restrictive clause and its object in an article written by a professional writer.

Another recommendation: count the number of times you used which when the rules of grammar say you should have used that. Once again, compare your use of which to that of a professional writer.

And then give yourself a grade.

____________
Note: If you think this is a ridiculous exercise because it’s not reasonable to compare what attorneys do to what professional writers do, then consider this. And then ask yourself this: would you rather play it safe, or would you rather take a great risk each time you draft an agreement?