Good & Bad at Winston & Strawn
I just reviewed this client alert that (not which) was published by Winston & Strawn. It has some good qualities, and some not-so-good qualities.
What struck me first about this alert was the typography. While most firms make the mistake of setting body copy in a sans-serif face, Winston & Strawn’s alerts have a much more professional appearance: heads are set in a sans-serif face, and the body copy is set in a serif face.
The second thing that struck me was the complete lack of hyphenation to justify the copy. (For some reason, law firms just don’t like to justify copy the way the professional publishers do.)
The third thing that struck me was the verbiage at the bottom of the alert. To obtain the alert, I simply clicked a link at the firm’s Web site. So it seemed very odd that the verbiage offered me a way to stop receiving alerts from the firm.
Right above that verbiage was this curious comment:*
If you would like to review your contact information, please click here.
I clicked the link, and the following appeared:
We’re sorry, but something seems to have gone wrong:
The contact and event information could not be decoded.
If you got to this page by clicking on a link in an email, then the link information in the email may have been split across two lines.You may be able to copy the link from the email and paste it into your browser.
OK. The firm thinks it e-mailed the alert to me. So I did this simple test. I clicked the firm’s logotype at the top of the alert, and guess what? Nothing happened! (Had this alert been produced by pros, the logotype would link to the firm’s Web site.)
I went back to the firm’s Publications page and clicked the PDF icon for the alert, and guess what? The PDF version of the alert is an HTML file!
Just for the heck of it, I chose to view the PDF version of another alert**, and guess what? No links at all! Not even to the firm’s Web site.
Winston & Strawn’s a firm with some chutzpah: it claims it’s one of “the most technologically advanced law firms in the world.” It’s alerts say otherwise.
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* After reading this post, the good folks at Winston & Strawn got rid of that curious comment, and all the weird things that followed it. Good for them.
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** In a tribute to the days before the IBM Selectric became so popular, that alert uses underlines, rather than italics,for emphasis.
4 June 2008 at 10:41
Underlines are frequently used by legal writers in lieu of italics because some court rules still require underlined text rather than italics. Lawyers get into the habit of it in law school, and it usually sticks with them throughout their careers. Alerts (and other sorts of publications) can often conform to industry standards in ways that might make them look ‘out of style’ to non-industry observers. Just food for thought.
4 June 2008 at 12:11
It makes perfect sense that a legal writer would underline, rather than italicize. But it doesn’t make sense that the author — usually a senior attorney at a large firm — would produce these alerts.
Why pay someone who earns $400/hr what someone who earns $40/hr could do quicker and better.