Set in Style

This article — titled “Blogging’s a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool” — appeared in yesterday’s New York Times. It discusses how blogs (when done properly) can help some people (e.g., shy lawyers) attract new business and gain attention. Here’s an excerpt:

David Harlow, a lawyer and health care consultant in Boston, said he started his blog, HealthBlawg, as a way of marketing himself after he left a large law firm and opened his own practice. Besides, he said, blogging was easy to get started and the technology was straightforward.

Now, after about two years of blogging, Mr. Harlow said he was pleased with the results. He gets about 200 to 300 visits a day, he said. He has also become a source for publications looking for commentary on regulatory issues in the health care field and has even gained a few clients because of the blog. In addition, he has formed relationships with other legal bloggers (who call themselves blawgers) and consultants around the country.

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Note the conditional: when done properly. Just posting another blog won’t do you a bit of good unless you do it right. More than that: if you put up a shoddy blog, it could drive prospects away, rather than draw them near.

I just stumbled upon this article that was published in the Oakland Business Review. It’s a pretty good article, but it’s also a good example of a basic rule in publishing: writers (even if they’re attorneys) need to have their articles reviewed before they’re published, else they run a risk.

Here’s the intro:

It comes as no surprise to business owners that the true success of a company is in large part due to its employees. That’s why recruiting and retaining the best talent is so important.

An editor would have revised the first sentence (. . . is due, in large part, to . . . ) and fixed that singular/plural disagreement in the second sentence.

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Here’s the interesting intro to this recent opinion in the matter of United Rentals v. Ram Holdings*:

In classical mythology, it took a demigod to subdue Cerberus, the beastly three-headed dog that guarded the gates of the underworld. In his twelfth and final labor, Heracles journeyed to Hades to battle, tame, and capture the monstrous creature. In this case, plaintiff United Rentals, Inc. journeyed to Delaware to conquer a more modern obstacle that, rather than guards the gates to the afterlife, stands in the way of the consummation of a merger. Nevertheless, like the three heads of the mythological Cerberus, the private equity firm of the same name presents three substantial challenges to plaintiff’s case: (1) the language of the Merger Agreement, (2) evidence of the negotiations between the parties, and (3) a doctrine of contract interpretation known as the forthright negotiator principle. In this tale the three heads prove too much to overcome.

First, the language of the Merger Agreement presents a direct conflict
between two provisions on remedies, rendering the Agreement ambiguous and
defeating plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment.

If you’re particularly interested in the potentially painful consequences of stuffing contracts with ambiguity, you’ll find it very interesting.

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*To fully appreciate the intro, you must know that Ram Holdings is an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P.

Dennis Kennedy has posted this list of 2007’s best law-related blogs.

Lawrence Solum, professor of law at the University of Illinois, has written this paper titled “Blogging and the Transformation of Legal Scholarship.”

From the abstract:

Does blogging have anything to do with legal scholarship? Could blogging transform the legal academy? This paper suggests that these are the wrong questions. Blogs have plenty to do with legal scholarship — that’s obvious. But what blogs have to do with legal scholarship isn’t driven by anything special about blogs qua weblogs, qua collections of web pages that share the form of a journal or log. The relationship between blogging and the future of legal scholarship is a product of other forces — the emergence of the short form, the obsolesce of exclusive rights, and the trend towards the disintermediation of legal scholarship. Those forces and their relationship to blogging will be the primary focus of this paper.

The Association of Corporate Counsel recently published this article titled “Top Ten Ways to Achieve Good Legal Writing.”

The article — written by Paula Colby-Clements, director of admissions at the Massachusetts School of Law — focuses on the ABCs of good legal writing: advocacy, brevity, and clarity.

This attorney-authored article is from an upcoming issue of Mealey’s Litigation Report. It’s written by Randy J. Maniloff, a partner at the Philadelphia firm of White and Williams LLP. And it’s a fine example of an attorney-authored article written in style.

Here’s the intro:

It is a rare day that a court is called upon to address the availability of insurance coverage for a claim for alienation of affections. But in 2007, this solar eclipse of a coverage issue saw the light not just once, but twice.

If you don’t think that’s a long shot, then how about this — both decisions came from South Dakota (the state’s supreme court and the Eighth Circuit applying South Dakota law). Those are Powerball odds.

And I thought the only thing that people in South Dakota did for fun was visit Mt. Rushmore. [South Dakotans — You can send hate mail to Maniloffr@whiteandwilliams.com.]

A bit more engaging than the typical attorney-authored article, is it not?

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I just discovered this blog that focuses on readability.

Here’s a post that discusses the Flesch readability formulas.

Should you be interested in such an arcane subject? Well, if you write or edit attorney-authored articles meant to attract business, then yes — you need to know what promotes and what hinders readability.

The Lawyers Weekly has this interview with Kenneth Adams, contract drafting guru and publisher of an excellent blog on drafting.

A few notable quotes:

As most lawyers would readily admit, the typical contract is chock full of archaic terms, myriad redundancies, awkward phrasing, unintended ambiguity and meaningless boilerplate.  Yet lawyers tend to be reasonably well-educated, literate and analytical. Which begs the question: why are contracts so poorly written?

“Junior lawyers are expected to learn drafting by osmosis without rigorous training and without reference to any set of rules. That results in junior associates’ learning all sorts of bad habits and before too long those bad habits become the normal way of doing things,” Adams explains.

“An enormous amount of litigation has its roots in deficient drafting,” Adams says.

“Many lawyers like the idea of contracts sounding mystical,” Adams posits. “You’d be doing yourself and your reader a favour by getting rid of such stuff [archaisms like witnesseth].”

This year, Holland & Hart received some well-deserved accolades for its innovative and refreshing marketing techniques.

I was just reviewing the firm’s blog when I clicked this link to see the firm’s latest print ads.

Here’s the first line of the first ad I reviewed:

“Mike Soucie’s passion for visual graphics started as a child.”

Ouch!