Set in Style

Consider the intro to this article published by a Florida firm. It’s about some recent news:

The FDA released new information on the Peanut Butter Plant that shows the company knew about the Salmonella potential, but failed to act on the information. This failure to act could have possibly prevented the deaths of 8 people and the sickness of 500 people with Salmonella. According to a statement from the FDA in the Washington Post, the Peanut Corporation of America found salmonella in internal tests a dozen times in 2007 and 2008 but sold the products anyway, sometimes after getting a negative finding from a different laboratory. This is an outrage that a company would ignore important data and findings. I would like to know their excuse or rationale for not taking these reports seriously.

To a skilled and experienced editor, there’s a serious problem with this intro, and that’s the claim that the company’s failure to act could have possibly prevented the deaths of 8 people and the sickness of 500 people.

The company’s failure to act might have prevented death and illness? That’s absurd!

What else does a skilled and experienced editor notice? Some weird capitalization, as in Peanut Butter Plant and Salmonella, and a failure to italicize The Washington Post. Also, referring to the Peanut Butter Plant as the company, setting three paragraphs as one, and that strange phrase, “the sickness of 500 people with Salmonella.”

Here’s the article from The Washington Post.

Can you find in it “a statement from the FDA?” No.

Here’s what that intro might look like after it was touched by an editor:

According to a recent article in The Washington Post, the Peanut Corporation of American — the company that owned and operated the Georgia peanut plant that turned out to be the source of an outbreak of salmonella that killed eight and sickened hundreds — knew through internal tests that its products were infected with the deadly bacteria, yet it sold the products anyway.

This is outrageous! The company knew of the problem, but ignored it. And I want to know why.

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Writing is thinking with a keyboard in front of you, and sloppy writing betrays sloppy thinking, which isn’t a great way to attract clients.

If you’re going to publish a blog, you’d best do as the pros do — put an editor between your writers and your readers, so your writers look sharp.

Let’s see — well established newspapers are having a tough go of it right now, and so are some great big law firms. Perhaps they should get together.

Why? Well, just the other day, I noted how some personal injury lawyers completely ignore the rights of others — in particular their copyrights. And this morning, I stumbled on another instance of it.

In this morning’s instance, I find that the Texas Personal Injury Law blog published an article belonging to the Houston Chronicle. Here’s the article as published by the Chronicle on 17 December 2008, and here it is again as published by the O’Hanlon, McCollom & Demerath, the firm that publishes the blog. The copy’s identical.

Both Sedgwick Detert Moran & Arnold LLP and Dilworth Paxson LLP have been celebrating their 75th anniversaries, but in different styles.

Here’s Sedgwick’s style:

And here’s Dilworth’s

Quite a difference.

Sedgwick shows good style, but Dilworth uses an image from a video feed and it looks lousy.

Here’s what I don’t understand — why doesn’t anyone at Dilworth look at the firm’s home page, notice this lousy looking image, and say, “Hey! We’ve got to polish this.”

Now, Sedgwick has a site devoted to its 75th anniversary, but you can’t see it. And why not? Because of a mistake. That’s why.

The result of that mistake is this — when you try to visit that site, you’re asked over and over again to install Adobe Flash.

Here’s what I don’t understand — why doesn’t anyone at Sedgwick look at the firm’s home page, notice this flaw in function, and say, “Hey! We’ve got to fix this. And pronto!”

It’s incredible. Noticeable, year-old mistakes left untended.

Our Brand = “We make mistakes and don’t fix them. Heck, we don’t even notice them.”

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Update: the problem at Sedgwick was resolved just a day after this article was posted. Dilworth dropped the video feed image a few weeks later.

Have you ever watched a foreign-language film, the dialog is set in subtitles, but you can’t read it because there’s not enough contrast between the text and the background, or because the background is just too busy? A bit of a pain, is it not.

Lots of attorney-authored blogs and law firm Web sites suffer a similar condition, particularly when it comes to disclaimers and such.

Consider the following notice that appears at the Hunton & Williams’ Web site:

Not so easy to read is it?

Let’s turn up the contrast and see what happens:

Much better, is it not? But there’s still that itsy-bitsy type in the last line that’s hard to read. Of course, had the site been properly designed, all a reader has to do is get his browser to increase the size of all the text, but that doesn’t work. The notice doesn’t increase in size as it should.

This doesn’t portray the firm as one that’s sensitive to people with disabilities.

Hayman & Kirshenbaum are the sort who make personal injury lawyers seem no better than common crooks and scoundrels.

Why do I say such a thing? Take a look at their untitled blog, which is chock full of news reports about accidents and such.

Here’s the intro to their latest post:

It was a driver’s education course, about seven years too soon.

When I read that, I thought, “What a classy way to start a story. Either Hayman, or Kirshenbaum, or someone on their staff has an education in journalism.”

I browsed a few more of their posts, and then I turned suspicious. “This isn’t their work. Based on other things published by H & K, it just can’t be.”

Sure enough, their latest post was stolen from the NBC station in Chicago. Take a look at what NBC published and compare it to what H & K published.

It turns out that the H & K blog consists of not much more than news stories stolen from others.

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Update: on 4 January 2009, Hayman & Kirshenbaum deleted that article they lifted from NBC. However, they still have plenty of other stuff at their site that’s not theirs.

Today’s quote comes from the latest post at the DC Injury Law Journal, a new blog published by Gabriel Assaad, a personal injury lawyer.

Here’s the start of the post:

The West Virginia Record wrote on January 9, 2009 a wonderful article about former Justice Larry Starcher overviewing his last days of his term and his fight to the end to protect the rights of individuals, including the areas of medical malpractice.

After that, there’s a long excerpt from the wonderful article. It’s about Forshey v. Jackson, a personal injury case where Paul Forshey sued physician Theodore Jackson for malpractice. That excerpt ends with this quote:

[Starcher] wrote that “this Court will do whatever it takes to protect doctors and lawyers from malpractice claims — no matter how meritorious those claims might be.”

After that, Assaad’s conclusion: “I believe the last line says it all!!!!”
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According to the quote, Starcher didn’t fight for individuals*. Quite the opposite: he strongly favored doctors and lawyers over those with credible malpractice claims against them. And then — quite against his own interests — Assaad applauds that.

The post could have praised Starcher as a champion of the little guy with a valid complaint against some hifalutin doctor and his expensive lawyer.

Instead, Assaad wrote something that didn’t make much sense or inspire much confidence.

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This is an example of why some lawyers shouldn’t waste their time with blogs and such, especially those who can’t or won’t adapt their writing style.

And it’s a reminder that a blog can do an attorney more harm than good, especially if the attorney doesn’t adopt the sturdy attitude that anything worth doing is worth doing right.

Note: you might want to check out the blog’s archives. While you’re at it, check out Assaad Law’s Web site.

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* Of course, an attorney who took the time would realize how flippant was Starcher’s comment. A potential client — Paul Forshey, for example — would not.

In this article, Martha Neil describes a 22-year-old man (an African American named Harris) who pled guilty to a possession-with-intent charge.

She writes:

Harris, who had no prior record, had been convicted of possession of cocaine with intent to deliver and being a party to the crime after entering a guilty plea . . . .

I stumbled when I read that, and here’s why — it says that Harris was convicted for “being a party to the crime after entering a guilty plea.” I know that’s not what the author meant, but that’s what I read.

So, what to do with this?

Here’s an approach:

Harris, who had no criminal record, pled guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. 

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How to improve what attorneys write — how to make attorneys look better in print than they might otherwise — is much the focus of this blog.

But I’m gonna go off track here. I’m gonna talk about the court of appeals decision in Wisconsin v. Landry M. Harris. I hope you don’t mind.

Here’s the story:

¶2        Harris, an African-American male, pled guilty to cocaine possession as a party to a crime.  He was sentenced several months after his twenty-first birthday.  A five-year sentence was imposed, consisting of two years of initial confinement and three years of extended supervision.  The trial court also ordered that Harris, who had no previous charges, convictions or juvenile adjudications, was eligible for the Challenge Incarceration Program and the Earned Release Program.

¶3        During Harris’s allocution at sentencing, he mentioned that he had a daughter who was almost two years old.  Shortly thereafter, the trial court asked Harris about his employment, which led to the following exchange that forms the basis for Harris’s appeal:

THE COURT:  Where are you working now?

THE DEFENDANT:  I’m unemployed right now.

THE COURT:  You’re unemployed still?

THE DEFENDANT:  Yes.

THE COURT:  Have you gotten a job since January?

THE DEFENDANT:  No, sir.

THE COURT:  You’re kidding.

THE DEFENDANT:  No.

THE COURT:  What do you do all day?

THE DEFENDANT:  I just stay at home with my daughter and that’s it.

THE COURT:  Where is her mother?

THE DEFENDANT:  At work.

THE COURT:  So the mother works and you sit at home, right?

THE DEFENDANT:  Yeah.

THE COURT:  And watch the child?

THE DEFENDANT:  I got all types of things goin’.  My personal family.

THE COURT:  Where does the baby’s mama work?

THE DEFENDANT:  Metro Market.

THE COURT:  Did she finish school?

THE DEFENDANT:  Yes.

THE COURT:  Is she going to college, too?

THE DEFENDANT:  Yes.

THE COURT:  Where do you guys find these women, really, seriously.  I’d say about every fourth man who comes in here unemployed, no education, is with a woman who is working full-time, going to school.  Where do you find these women?  Is there a club?

THE DEFENDANT:  No.

THE COURT:  You’re sure?

THE DEFENDANT:  I ain’t find her at—she not the club [type].

THE COURT:  Oh, she’s not the club type.

Later in the sentencing, the trial court stated:  “Mr. Harris sits at home, gets high while his baby mama works and goes to school.  I swear there’s a club where these women get together and congregate.”

Harris appealed the severity of his punishment, claiming the trial judge “improperly relied on race and gender stereotypes” during sentencing.

All the court focused on — and I can imagine this was due to counsel’s lack of zealousness — was whether Harris got a more severe sentence because he was black.

It didn’t bother to consider whether Harris suffered gender discrimination at sentencing*. I think he did.

Why? Because the judge felt Harris should have been employed because of his gender. “You’re just like all the other young black men who I sentence for selling drugs. Your girlfriend works, while you care for the child. That’s quite the opposite of how things should be, according to me.”

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*The Relevant Rules of Conduct hold that:

(d)  A judge shall be patient, dignified and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity and shall require similar conduct of lawyers, staff, court officials and others subject to the judge’s direction and control….

(e)  A judge shall perform judicial duties without bias or prejudice.  A judge may not, in the performance of judicial duties, by words or conduct, manifest bias or prejudice, including bias or prejudice based upon race, gender, religion, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, and may not knowingly permit staff, court officials and others subject to the judge’s direction and control to do so.

Just got a message via e-mail from the Legal Marketing Association. They’re advertising a distance learning program titled Effective Business Writing.

From the message:

Participants will learn to . . . organize your thoughts quickly and clearly. 

This must be some sort of super-duper learning program.

A well written, attorney-authored blog wins a writing award. Imagine that.

Suppose you went to a law firm’s Web site. Suppose you clicked on the Newsletters link, and this appeared.

What’s weird is this — if you click the link to the article titled “The Role of the Derivative Plaintiff: Second Circuit Withdraws Equity Committee’s Derivative Standing, Emphasizing Central Role of Debtor and Bankruptcy Court Regarding Legal Affairs,” the publication that appears contains an article titled “Two Different Animals: Imposition of Automatic Stay Pending Recognition of Foreign Proceeding Is Not Injunctive Relief Subject to Section 1519(e) Requirements.” But if you click the link to that article, the publication that appears contains an articled titled “Close, But No Insider: Tenth Circuit Holds Mere Close Relationship Is Not Enough to Make Creditor an Insider.”

That’s what’s weird.

The problem is the result of someone deciding she knew better than the rest of the world how things should be done. 

In this case, a bunch of articles appear in just one publication, but the links to them don’t go to the articles themselves, as they most certainly should. And the articles are listed as if they were published separately, rather than together.

So, when a reader clicks one of the links, what happens is not what’s expected.

And that ain’t good. 

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Reminds me of the adage — “you’ve got to learn the rules before you can break them.”