Missing the Basics
Marcia Pennington Shannon of Shannon & Manch (consultants to many large law firms) authored this interesting article for Legal Practice Magazine. It’s an interview with Ross Guberman, principal of Legal Writing Pro, a consulting firm that teaches legal writing. In it, Guberman lists the top four problems that partners have with the writings of their associates:
• Poor structure/rambling organization
• Passive voice/awkward sentences/ambiguous clauses
• Clutter/wordiness
• Grammar/usage/proofreading/ attention to detail
What does this tell us about what’s not required to enter law school?
3 March 2008 at 12:45
Mister,
Sad but true that mastering the basics of legal discourse, legal analysis, legal citation, and traditional legal formats takes up almost all the time and energy available in a legal-writing course.
What you call “basics” become secondary when students use legal words incorrectly, engage in shallow or hasty legal analysis, rely on the wrong authorities, cite those authorities incorrectly, and leave out required parts of the document.
Getting students to master legal writing is all we can do. Taking them from there to being polished legal writers at the level you’d like to see . . . well, it doesn’t happen often.
Here’s a helpful article about it:
Douglans Laycock, Why the First-Year Legal-Writing Course Cannot Do Much About Bad Legal Writing, 1 Scribes Journal of Legal Writing 83 (1990).
3 March 2008 at 12:52
Seems to me that people should master the basics before they enter law school.
Given the importance of writing skills to most attorneys, should students not be required to demonstrate mastery of basic writing skills (grammar/usage/structure) before they enter law school?