Set in Style

Kevin O’Keefe, the founder and driving force behind LexBlog — a firm that offers lawyers a “turn-key, professional blog service” — and a pioneer in making the Internet useful for marketing legal servicecs, recently wrote an article titled “Law firm websites : Do all lawyers need them?”

The article says a Web site is essential, but that you need more than a good site to effectively promote a practice — you also need to participate in social networking; i.e., you need a blog, you need to tweet and twitter, and you need an account on LinkedIn (or Facebook, etc.).

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Check out the heading to this article* published by a law firm in Phoenix, Arizona:

It’s a small firm, run by one attorney — a solo prone to errors in grammar and spelling and punctuation and formatting, etc.

Her writing is probably doing her more harm than good: after all, who wants an attorney who can’t do what’s expected of a high school student?

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If you’re an attorney, and you just finished writing something that includes a bunch of hefty phrases like “including without limitation X, and Y, and Z, and so forth, and so on,” and now you’re getting ready to write a client alert (or a letter to a client or a prospective client or someone who might introduce you to a valuable client), take a moment to shift gears. Before you start to write something that someone will want to read (as opposed to that collection of hefty phrases you just wrote that all of a handful of people have to read), think of what readers want.

One way to do that is to fetch a cup of coffee (or tea, if you’re that sort) and watch Doug Stern talk about the KILLER BEs. It’s good stuff.

Here’s the intro to a post at a new blog that just doesn’t bother to do some of the things that professional publishers do:

Under California Law numerous exceptions exist to the traditional “American Rule” wherein each party is required to pay their own attorneys’ fees in litigation. The exceptions exist in three general categories.

Can you spot the error(s)? How would you fix this?

Or would you?

In this modern day and age, do errors in punctuation, grammar, or syntax even matter?

So long as readers can understand what the writer wrote, isn’t everything swell?

The U.S. Immigrants Blog published by Azulay Seiden has something few blogs do — a page of instructions advising all that:

Anyone can comment on blog posts, regardless of whether they are registered or signed in.

It’s a singular/plural disagreement that yields an absurdity.

It looks like this week’s focus is on intros (i.e., introductions to articles, blog posts, client alerts, and the like).

Consider the following intro to a story written by a journalist:

A North Andover man, who owns a pizza shop in Tyngsborough, is accused of beating an employee with a bat and sticking a gun in his mouth because he thought the man stole $20,000.

Compare that to the intro to the same story written by an attorney:

Eric Sideri owns Angela’s Coal Fired Pizza in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts. On Saturday night he and his manager Al Guevara pistol whipped and beat an employee Sideri believed stole twenty thousand dollars from the business. According to reports Sideri left the business sometime Saturday night seemingly in a bad mood. Guevara, who manages another one of Sideri’s stores came into the establishment. Shortly after the business closed Guevara told the cleaning crew to leave the property. Guevara started to count the evening’s take when Sideri re-arrived and began accusing the victim of taking his money. Sideri then proceeded to beat the victim with the bat. Sideri then tied the victim’s hands behind his back, withdrew two guns and threatened to blow his brains out. Sideri then stuck the larger of the two guns in the employee’s mouth and threatened to kill him. Sideri and Guevara then allowed the victim to leave the store. The victim called the police and his girlfriend and went to the hospital for treatment of his injuries. Sideri was arrested at his home. A warrant has been issued for Guevara’s arrest. Sideri has been charged in the Lowell Distict Court with three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, threatening to commit the crime of murder, larceny of a motor vehicle and kidnapping.

How striking the differences. The journalist uses 34 words, and the attorney uses 218. The journalist writes about $20,000, and the attorney writes about twenty thousand dollars. The journalist wouldn’t consider starting sentence after sentence with the same subject, but the attorney starts seven sentences with name of the owner of the pizza shop.

The most striking difference (from a different angle)? The journalist says the owner is accused of a crime; the attorney claims the owner commited the crime.

Consider the following intro, published by The Bar Association of Evil Attorneys:

On this date, in the Garden State, the Supreme Court of New Jersey suspended Terrence P. Tormey for unethically representing a 79-year old native of Portugal who had difficulty in speaking and understanding the English language in the sale of his home to another of Mr. Tormey’s clients (a sophisticated businessman). The result of this transaction was that Tormey’s conflict, coupled with his gross negligence and failure to communicate with the seller, caused the seller to essentially give his house away. Tormey represented both parties from negotiation through closing.

The various errors say an editor didn’t review this before it was published.

An editor would have polished it, perhaps like so:

On this date, in the Garden State, the Supreme Court of New Jersey suspended an attorney, Terrence P. Tormey, for “gross neglect, lack of diligence, conflict of interest, failure to safeguard funds,” in addition to “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.”

Tormey represented both parties in the sale of a home: the seller, an “elderly man . . . a Portuguese national with limited understanding of the English language,” and the buyer, a savvy businessman and Tormey’s long-time friend. It was Tormey’s disregard for the seller’s interests that lead the seller to give his house away — and for no consideration at all!

What about you? What would you do with that intro?

My apologies — I’ve been so danged busy I haven’t had the time to devote to this blog. And I still don’t.

But if you’re just hankering for some word from yours truly, check this out: Look Sharp Online. It’s about the things you need to do to make your blog look like a serious, professional endeavor.

More to come next week.

Some sound advice from Gyi Tsakalakis on what attorneys can do to make sure their blogs are effective (i.e., attract potential clients). Here’s an excerpt from an article he wrote advising attorneys on how they can promote their practices:

4. Blog- (60 mins./week)- OK, so perhaps 1 hour per week isn’t enough, but it’s a good start.

Entire books have been written on blogging, but I will try to point out some quick and dirties here.  Write about something you know a lot about.  You want your blog to get linked to and commented on, so keep your writing interesting.  Don’t think treatise, think law school outlines.  Keep the pace quick and light.  Try to use relevant keywords where appropriate.  Remember, the quality of your content is key.  Write for your readers, they will reward you.

Make sure you are circulating your blog posts.  Email them to colleagues.  Submit them to your social network groups.  Submit your blog to legal blog (blawg) directories.  Some of the top blawg directories can be found here.

You can be sure Gyi is an attorney: he puts two spaces after a stop!

Here’s a good example of why attorney-authors need editors:

POSTED ON MARCH 6, 2009 BY STEPHEN KLEINMAN
The Supreme Court Decides Wyeth v. Levine

On March 4, 2009, in Wyeth v. Levine, No. 06-1249, the United States Supreme Court upheld, by a 6-3 vote, the Vermont Supreme Court’s holding in favor of a patient who argued that the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of a pharmaceutical drug’s label warnings did not impliedly preempt state failure-to-warn claims.

That’s the intro to an article (a blog post) published by Schottenstein Zox & Dunn Co., “one of Ohio’s largest full-service law firms.”

Compare that to this:

Supreme Court rejects limits on drug lawsuits

By MARK SHERMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 4, 2009; 4:25 PM

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court forcefully rejected calls Wednesday for limiting consumer lawsuits against drug makers, upholding a $6.7 million jury award to a musician who lost her arm to gangrene following an injection.

That’s the intro to an article (a newspaper article) about the same story.

Which article would you rather read? Which do you think most people (including potential clients) will read?

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If you want to attract readers (including potential clients), you need a good intro to any article you put your name to.

Readers expect a good idea of what you’re going to discuss, and they want it in an easy-to-digest nugget. An intro needs to give readers what they want, and it needs to inspire them to read on (rather than move on).

Journalists are taught how to write intros that make readers want to continue reading, and that’s a skill that attorney-authors could use to great affect.

Interested?