Set in Style

Consider the start of a post at the HR Lawyer’s Blog:

Notice how the copy runs so very close to left side of the picture? 

This is a fairly common error made by attorney/bloggers. And it’s so easy to avoid. All you have to do is specify a margin, like so:

<img src=”margin: 5px; . . . . >

What? You don’t know how to specify that margin? Then you should learn. If you’re going to be a publisher, act like one.

You should also imitate how professional publishers set pictures. Then, you’d align the top of the picture with the first line of copy. It would have a more professional appearance.  

Note: if you’re an attorney, appearing like one who pays attention is a good thing.

What else? The Austin American Statesman is a newspaper, so it should be italicized. And quotes from the paper should be clearly identified as such.

Don’t plagiarize. Don’t take whole chunks of copy from the article in newspaper (e.g., “[t]he lure of $555 million in federal stimulus money for additional unemployment insurance has Texas legislators mulling whether to expand unemployment benefits to more workers;” “Texas would have to implement some key changes to state law — including including modifying some eligibility requirements to include tens of thousands of low-wage workers. Such changes have been considered but not enacted in previous sessions, . . . .”) and present them as if you wrote them.    

If you write a post about a newspaper article, and it doesn’t say anything beyond what the newspaper article says, then why should anyone bother to read it? Who’s looking for rehash of what’s already been published?

Several recent posts here focused on an important aspect of good typesetting — consistent word spacing.

I can show you how to achieve it, but — if you want to know why it’s so important — you need to listen to those who study things like fixations and saccades.

If you really want to know, then here you go:

The Psychology of Reading

Do you wonder whether you should put an adverb before or after a verb? Do you find yourself writing fewer when you should have written less? What about when to use who and when to use whom?

Then here are two good resources you should know of about:

Grammar Monkey

Grammar Girl

Consider the following block of type (which appears in this alert published by MBHB), an IP firm near Seattle. Note the consistent word spacing.

	Justified Copy with Hyphenation

Consider the following block of type, and note the inconsistent word spacing.

	Justified Copy without Hyphenation

The difference between the two blocks is just this — both are justified¹, but one is hyphenated², and one isn’t.

Here’s a good rule — when you justify copy, hyphenate it, else you’ll wind up with inconsistent word spacing.

Not only does inconsistent spacing look amateurish, it imposes an unnecessary burden on readers (and that’s not a good thing to do if you want them to think well of you).

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1. When copy is justified, the right and left sides are straight and parallel.
2. When copy is hyphenated, hyphens appear on the right side to show where some words break across lines. The practice goes back to before Gutenberg set his first bible.

The secret is in plain sight. Grab a newspaper, or a magazine, or a book — especially a book. Take a look at the spaces between the words. And note how consistent those spaces are.

Now, consider some copy from a client alert published by a big law firm:

Note the spacing between the words. In particular, compare the spacing in the last two lines.

The spacing isn’t very consistent; the spaces in the next-to-last line are more than three times wider than they are in the last line.

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Some of the best typesetting you’ll ever find appears in trade books, and here’s why — a publisher (that hopes to sell as many books as possible) wants a reader’s experience to be as pleasant as possible.

When you get a chance, grab a best-seller. Compare a page of it to a page from a client alert published by your firm.

How do you want that client alert you just wrote to look? Like it was produced by pros, or paralegals?

Consider this reduction of a page from a client alert.

What’s wrong with the layout? If you don’t have an opinion, you don’t know page design.

(more…)

I’m reviewing several blogs right now. Each is:

• published by a firm with from 70 to 160 attorneys
• authored by from three to eight attorneys
• inconsistent in the way copy is set

Here’s what else they have in common: there’s nothing between what the attorney-authors write and what their prospective readers read.

In short, none of these firms (publishers) applies Total Quality Management to their operations.

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Does it matter? You bet!

Clients want quality, and when you charge fantastic fees for your services, they have every reason to expect it.

What about prospective clients, the ones you’ve been trying to attract?

They want quality representation at a reasonable price. You certainly don’t want your blog to leave them with the impression they can’t get that from you.

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Think of it — how do prospective clients evaluate you and your firm? How do they decide to hire you, rather than someone else?

In large part, their decisions are based on impressions.

If you publish a blog that’s read by prospective clients, it will affect their impression of you. As they read it, they’ll decide your firm pays attention to detail, or it doesn’t; that it values quality, or not. And they’ll notice that your firm reviews its attorneys’ works, or can’t guarantee what they’re doing.

In short, if you’re going to function as a publisher, act like a publisher — put an editor between what your attorney-authors write, and what your prospective clients read. 

Ogletree Deakins, a firm that focuses on employment law, issued this alert titled “President Signs Stimulus Bill With Significant COBRA Changes for Employers” just minutes after the president signed the bill.

A good way to connect to current events? I say so.

People want news when it’s fresh, not when it’s old.

You know the old saying — “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

And — I suspect — you know how valid that saying is.

But what do you know about audience analysis — knowing who’s watching you? And what do you know of audience selection — deciding who you want watching you?

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I just read this interesting article in Minnesota Lawyer about how blogging can help you attract clients, “as long as you do it well, that is.”

What struck me most was this observation by Samuel Glover, an attorney whose blogging manages to attract 14,000 readers (mostly those who are potential clients or who know potential clients) a month.

Glover said that while not all of the people who visit his blogs are potential clients, all of them are people who might know a potential client.

I say, this observation is significant for any attorney who wants to attract clients.

If you’re an attorney and you want to attract clients — be they the GCs of Fortune 500 companies or VCs in Silicon Valley or any other sort — then you should consider Glover’s observation.

(more…)

Today’s quote comes from Mike Dillon, general counsel to Sun Microsystems. Here it is:

After many years in the profession, I’m convinced that the most difficult skill for any lawyer to master is the ability to write with simplicity and clarity.

Let’s see what a skilled and experienced editor does with it:

After many years in the profession, I’m convinced that the most difficult skill for a lawyer to master is the ability to write simply and clearly.