Set in Style

I recently suggested that attorneys writing about events (and trying to attract readers) consider this exercise — write about the events the way journalists do.

Let’s compare the intros to two articles about the same event. One article was written by an experienced attorney; the other was written by a young journalist. The event is a lawsuit recently filed in federal court in Brooklyn, NY in Eros, LLC et al v. Simon et al.

Here’s how Eric Sinrod, a partner with Duane Morris and a regular columnist for Findlaw and CNET, began his article (curiously titled When virtual legal chickens come home to roost):

Netizens are spending more and more of their time living their lives online in virtual worlds. But while many virtual world interactions are not real and take place in fictitious places, virtual disputes increasingly are landing in real courts back in terra firma.

Second Life is one of the best known virtual worlds. Through interactive computer simulation, participants act through their avatars and are able to see, hear, and work with simulated objects in a computer-generated environment.

And here’s how Kathianne Boniello of the New York Post began her article (titled Unreality Byte$):

A half-dozen entrepreneurs are suing a Queens man, charging him with counterfeiting and selling versions of their products.

Here’s the catch: The products aren’t real, and the alleged crimes took place in a virtual world on the Web.

Quite a difference. Sinrod’s first two paragraphs contain twice as many words as Boniello’s, but say much less about the event. While Boniello gets right to the point (the case is about counterfeit products being sold in a virtual world), Sinrod leaves the busy reader wondering what the case is about or why it’s important or interesting (or why the busy reader should keep reading).

Quite a difference between the titles of these two pieces as well. Sinrod’s article never ties into the notion of “chickens coming home to roost.”

Leaving readers scratching their heads isn’t good form. It doesn’t sell papers, and it’s not an effective way of attracting clients.

You’re an attorney and you just finished writing a client alert for your firm. Now, all that’s left to do is to send your copy to marketing, right? Hardly so!

That’s your work and — if your marketing department is any good — the alert you wrote is likely to be seen by potential clients, and others. That’s your name on it. So, you want to make sure it looks right.

You sent the marketing department a Micrsoft Word file, but that’s not what was published. The folks in marketing (and IT) did quite a few things to produce the alert.

If you want to make sure they did a good job, look at what they did. Look at the published alert.

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Let’s suppose you’re an attorney for Nossaman Guthner Knox & Elliott LLP, a firm that — like so many others — claims an unabiding commitment to excellence:

For the past 60 years, the firm has been home to some of the brightest legal minds and most creative thinkers in the State. We have developed a proud history that is rich in legal excellence and public leadership.

Now, examine the disclaimer at the bottom of the alert you wrote. If it looks like this, you’ve discovered a notable problem:

This message is being sent to you in compliance with proposed Federal legislation for commercial e-mail (S.1618 - Section 301). Pursuant to Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S. 1618, further transmissions to you by the sender of this e-mail may be stopped at no cost to you by submitting a request to REMOVE in the subject line to info@nossaman.com or by clicking ‘unsubscribe’ above.

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The disclaimer must have been written before CAN-SPAM became the law; and that was nearly four years ago!

This is weird: the disclaimer offers a way to stop “further transmissions,” but the alert wasn’t sent to you. You went to your firm’s Web site, and selected the alert.

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If you wouldn’t consider visiting a potential client unless your shoes are shined, your hair is combed, and your hands are cleaned, then you wouldn’t publish something without reviewing it first, right?

Anything you put your name to can form a potential client’s first impression of YOU. You don’t want that first impression tarnished because of the errors of others, especially if you should have caught those errors and fixed them. And you do check everything you put your name to, right?

A Nifty Tool for anyone drafting or producing legal documents is Legal Speller, “a classic American law dictionary” that contains 20,000 legal terms. It works with WordPerfect and Word, and sells for $80.

As an attorney, you’re used to writing for a particular audience — judges, their clerks, and other attorneys. If you’ve been at it for some time, you’ve developed, or adopted, a style for that audience.

Suppose you’re called upon to write for a different audience. Suppose you’re asked to write for an audience composed of corporate counselors, the people who hire and fire them, and other attorneys. Suppose you’re asked to write a Client Alert about something significant.

You’re addressing a different audience for a different purpose, so it makes sense to use a different style.

If you don’t have another style, try this:

1. Find something you wrote that describes a sequence of events.
   
2. Read a few articles in a newspaper.
   
3. Rewrite what you wrote as if it was going to appear in the newspaper.
   
4. Make believe your salary is based on how happy the newspaper’s editor is with the results of Step 3.
   

If you rightfully imagine a big salary, then — the next time you’re called upon to write a Client Alert about something significant — just follow Step 3 and Step 4.

People will be impressed.

A law firm — one consistently ranked as having the very best intellectual property practice — decides to publish a a series of primers on copyrights and trademarks and patents and such.

The firm’s motive is to drum up business, and this looks like a promising way to do it, because if one of these primers gets into the right person’s hands at the right time, it could yield a fortune!

But it has to be done right. If it’s not done right, it’s a waste of time, at best.

For some reason, the firm decides not to bring in an editor.

In this post, we look at the effect of the firm’s penny-wise/pound-foolish approach to publishing.

Here’s the opening paragraph of the firm’s primer on copyrights:

Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of “original works of authorships,” which gives them the exclusive right to make copies. Copyright protection derives from the constitutional grant of power to the United States Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors. . . the exclusive Right to their. . . Writings.” (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 ) To this end, Congress has enacted a succession of Copyright Acts and amendments, beginning in 1790. Much of the history of copyright is the story of law following technological developments as old as wax cylinder recordings and the photocopier, and as new as the internet and file-swapping through the use of peer-to-peer networks.

And here is what that opening might have been had the firm engaged an editor:

In the United States, copyright protection stems from the power of Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Tımes to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

The current law — the Copyright Act of 1976 — guarantees authors of “original works” exclusive rights to those works. It also provides a way for authors to protect and enforce their rights.

This paper gives an overview of copyright law. It also presents some things authors and others — from software developers to traditional publishing companies to the newest types of publishers — can do to protect and enforce their rights.

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Let’s take a look at what the editor did with the opening. What changes did he make, and why did he make them?

Consider the very first sentence of the original. Obviously, what it says is not true: copyright does not give authors “the exclusive right to make copies.” Copyright is the right to make copies.

The edited version claims that the law guarantees authors certain rights, which is true. According to the U.S. Copyright Office, “Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) . . . .”

The edited version doesn’t claim that copyright is just “the exclusive right to make copies.” It’s more than that.

Consider this peculiar phrase in the first sentence of the original: original works of authorships. What can that mean?

To find out, let your fingers do the searching. Ask the good folks at Google to find other instances of this peculiar phrase.

According to Google, the phrase appears a total of four times (five times after I post this article), so it’s certainly not very popular.

Delete the last character in the phrase and try the search once more. Presto! According to Google, the phrase “original works of authorship” appears 129,000 times.

Note: Had the editor done nothing more than delete one character from this primer, it might have helped people looking for information on copyrights find it. It might have helped the piece achieve its goal of drumming up new business.

The last sentence in the original introduces a new topic (the history of copyright) and suggests that — even though copyright has been around since the 1500s — it’s only “as old as wax cylinder recordings” that were introduced in the late 1800s.

In place of that, the edited version simply gives the reader an idea of the scope of the piece. And there are some very good reasons why the pros do that. Among others, it helps readers decide whether they should continue reading, or move on.

Want to breed readers as potential clients? Cater to them!

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Let’s compare the readability of the original to that of the edited version. The Flesch Reading Ease (a standard measure of readability) of the original is 37.1; the Flesch Reading Ease of the edited version is 45.4.

Let’s see what happens when we cut the constitutional copy from both versions. Then the Flesch Reading Ease of the original drops to 24.8 while the Flesch Reading Ease of the edited version rises to 51.4. In other words, excepting the constitutional copy, the edited version is twice as readable as the original.

Is this important? You bet it is! Studies consistently show that readers are repelled by poor readability. And repelling readers is no way to attract clients.

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There’s an old adage: anything worth doing is worth doing right. Surely that applies to your firm’s marketing materials.

Yesterday, I got home and discovered a special edition of American Lawyer in my mailbox. It was the Fall 2007 Student Edition, a special, promotional issue that focused on a survey of 7,300 summer associates that gauged how happy they were with their summer jobs.

There was a piece by Nate Raymond on the status of revised ABA Standard 211, which requires most law schools to increase the diversity of their student bodies.

There was a full-page ad from Perkins Coie that described its newest associates like this: “Nearly One-Third Are Diverse.”

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Question: is it a good idea for Perkins Coie (and other firms) to use Diverse this way?

Sure, it’s an adjective, so the claim is grammatically correct, but it’s meaningless because individuals (unlike groups) cannot be diverse.

Look — a Black, Chinese, Jewish, Lesbian graduate of Harvard Law School may be very rare, but she’s certainly not more diverse than anyone else. Like everyone else, she’s an individual. And she knows it.

What does this very rare law school graduate think of Perkins Coie’s way of discussing diversity, which says that she has lots and lots of it, but most law school graduates (over two-thirds of them) have none?

Better yet — what does the General Counsel of some Fortune 500 company think of this? Is he/she impressed by this play on words?

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Here’s an interesting story about students at top-tier law schools, the Big Law firms they hope to work for, diversity rankings, and unreasonable demands to deny employment opportunities to others based on their ethnicity and sexual preference.