The Mystery Matador
Let’s suppose you’re a successful attorney, a senior partner at a great big law firm who makes $600 an hour. You surely don’t need any help with your writing, right?
OK. Let’s suppose you’re a young associate. You’re in the early stages of your career. One thing that distinguishes you from most other attorneys is your ability to write clearly, concisely, and persuasively. You’ve got a knack for it, despite getting lousy grades in your legal writing classes.
And let’s suppose you know a senior partner at your firm who makes $600 an hour, but who’s a lousy writer: someone whose writing is pompous, full of convoluted phrases, and excess verbiage. As a young associate, you really can’t offer any advice to this senior partner, can you?
But you can do this. You can have the Mystery Matador tell the senior partner what’s wrong with his writing. Just take some of the senior partner’s pompous prose, feed it to the Matador, and enter the senior partner’s e-mail address. The Matador does an objective evaluation (it doesn’t know a $600-an-hour attorney from a 1L), and sends that evaluation to the senior partner.
Of course, it won’t do a darned bit of good. If the senior partner made it so far with such poor writing skills . . . .
