Lawyers as Managing Editors
In the past few years, a number of large law firms have named a few partners as editors of practice-area newsletters (and of other publications, like practice-area blogs). And that makes perfect sense because the authors of those newsletters need what all authors need — editors to review their work. But what do these lawyer/editors do?
For the most part, these partner/editors act as managing editors: they plan the editorial calendar, assign articles, and the like. They’re not copy editors, and they don’t use copy editors.
And it shows.
Consider the last paragraph from this newsletter published by Proskauer Rose LLP, edited by Kristen J. Mathews.
It is reasonable to anticipate that the FTC will ultimately issue either guidelines or rules which apply to mobile marketing campaigns that attempt to set forth uniform requirements for mobile marketing.
To a copy editor, this sentence needs immediate attention. It contains a grammatical error; despite that error, it says this: some mobile marketing campaigns, rather than the FTC, are attempting to set forth uniform requirements for mobile marketing. That can’t be what the author intended. The author probably intended this (and he assures us he did):
It is reasonable to anticipate that the FTC will ultimately issue either guidelines or rules that attempt to set forth uniform requirements for mobile marketing campaigns.
If a good copy editor had reviewed that copy, it might have appeared like so:
It is reasonable to anticipate that the FTC will set forth uniform requirements, either guidelines or rules, for mobile marketing campaigns.
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So, what’s the problem? Why don’t these lawyer/editors use copy editors? Aren’t they concerned about errors slipping by?
Aren’t they concerned that a prospective client or a prospective employer (somewhere down the road) might interpret these errors as signs of a lack of attention to detail?
Aren’t their firms even a wee-bit worried that a prospective client (the person the newsletter was written to attract) might see these errors as a GREAT BIG warning sign (i.e., “at our firm, after one of our lawyer/editors reviews an attorney’s copy, it still might not make much sense”)?
I’ll discuss such things in a future post. (Look for Lawyers as Managing Editors, Part II.)
