Set in Style

Today, two lawyers are showing up in the news because of what they wrote.

First is Melissa Ruman Stewart, a partner at Winstead PC who wrote an article about lawyers, competitive intelligence, and ethics that was published in the National Law Journal.

Second is Gregory Bartko, an attorney in Atlanta who’s married to a woman from Nigeria. Bartko wrote a press release detailing a lawsuit against Delta Air Lines because the airline wouldn’t let his wife board a flight to the U.S.

The press release is showing up in all sorts of places. And that’s good, because it takes attention away from Wachovia Bank’s lawsuit against Bartko.

Consider the following paragraph from this article published by Thelen LLP (the firm’s new name):

The origin of U.S. copyright law is found in the United States Constitution. Article One, Section 8, clause 8, which delegates to Congress the power to “promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Congress has passed and amended a number of copyright laws effectuating this Constitutional mandate, with the modern iteration being embodied primarily in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. §101 et seq., and its subsequent amendments.

Consider the reference to one clause in the U.S. Constitution — Article One, Section 8, clause 8.

Notice that Section is set up, while clause is set down. One is set up and 8 is set as a numeral. If you think that’s the right way to set things, see if you can find an authority that agrees with you.

The second line isn’t a sentence; it’s a fragment.

Take a look at the third sentence. Constitutional is set up, rather than down. If you think constitutional is a proper adjective, see if you can find an authority that agrees with you.

Big deals? Of course not. But they suggest that the firm doesn’t review its own work — that it doesn’t pay attention to detail.

For a law firm, that can’t be good.

Steve Bennett, a partner in the New York office of Jones Day, has written an article titled “Communication Skills are Crucial to Success.”

It’s geared towards young attorneys, and it starts like so:

Law is a service profession. Good service depends on good communication. Good communication must be relevant, focused and timely.

Yet, law school essentially teaches future lawyers nothing about good communication skills. There are courses in legal writing and advocacy, but little about the day-to-day practice of law.

Freshly minted lawyers, as a result, often have poor communication skills. Such underdeveloped skills can, in practice, be as harmful to a budding career as lapses in judgment or even downright incompetence.

Let’s review some key aspects of good communication that junior lawyers should begin to develop in their first days of practice. These skills are enduring. No matter the area of practice, type of position (government, in-house or law firm) or size of the institution with which the lawyer associates, good communication skills will always serve a lawyer well.

Paul Horowitz, associate professor of law at The University of Alabama, offers some good advice to 1Ls:

Well, OK, it is a course.  But it’s not just a course. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it is something separate and apart from your substantive courses — or worse, that it is less important than them. Effective legal writing is effective legal practice — both because good legal writing is good legal analysis, and because most of what you do as a lawyer will involve communicating clearly to others, either in written or oral form and regardless of whether you’re communicating with an adversary, a client, or someone on the other side of a corporate transaction. Moreover, mastering good legal writing is the best “strategy” there is for mastering your substantive exams: a great legal exam, in my view, is just a great legal memo written under unusual time pressure. So treat legal writing as one of your most important courses, whether or not it’s pass/fail, and do your best to internalize the form of the legal memo so that you can use it on your exams.

Imagine you’re responsible for a terrific transaction — one worth billions of dollars.

You’re looking for outside counsel to assist in a particular area of the transaction and (next week) you’re going to have lunch with the head of some firm’s M & A group. He wants your business.

Days before that lunch, you ask an assistant for information on the head of the group, and one of the things you get is a client alert he recently wrote on the very area you need help in.

When you read it, you discover human errors here and there. You find it’s in place of its, then in place of than, and there in place of their. Despite all the alerts alert’s good qualities, what grabs your attention are those errors, and the author’s failure to tend to them.

It doesn’t matter that the prospective firm’s M & A group has a system in place to catch all sorts of human errors like misspellings and vague wording. That, you don’t see. What you see are those errors. You see a lack of attention to detail, and that leaves you leery.

All the head of the M & A group had to do was to ask someone to proof his copy before it was published. That’s all.

And then you wouldn’t have any cause to question his competence, or find some excuse to cancel lunch.

Did I mention copyblogger? I guess not.

Well . . . let me mention it now.

If you’re an attorney and you write posts for your firm’s blog, then you should be hip to copyblogger, a blog about copy (you do know what copy is, right?) hosted by Brian Clark, an “Internet marketing strategist, content developer, entrepreneur, and recovering attorney.”

If content is king (as they say) then copy is downright regal.

There’s a discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy inspired by this new article posted at SSRN. The discussion (and the article) is about the reasons why so few law review articles are written by women.

If you’re interested in that sort of thing, then you might also be interested in this article, which discusses the use of sexism in discourse.

Here’s another example why you should have proof everything you publish, and why you should have a proofing procedure in place Before You Publish.

Consider this view of a recent law firm newsletter:

The bulleted items aren’t set right. Does it matter?

(more…)

Robert Ambrogi — attorney, writer, and media consultant — discusses law firms as publishers in this new video produced by Legal Channels.

Advice to young lawyers from Alex Kozinski:

“It is difficult to overstate the importance of a written paper for a young lawyer’s career, especially if the piece is published.“