Set in Style

A few weeks ago, a friendly reader asked:

What’s up with the new tendency to hypenate all modifiers, including (and especially irritating) the hypen-forbidden ”ly” words (e.g. family-friendly policy = WRONG)  The lawyers and marketers definitely need a little schooling on this!

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Consider this intro to a blog post written by a well-known professor of economics:

The growth of large government managed funds during the past few years has been spectacular.

Can you spot the problem with this sentence?

(more…)

Here’s the intro to an article published by a great, big law firm:

In a recent high profile US case, a large securities firm had to pay out millions of dollars in settlement to the US equivalent of the Financial Services Authority because the firm had not disclosed copy emails in arbitration claims because they thought they were no longer in their possession as their computer servers had been destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Whew! That tongue twister contains 63 words, has a a singular/plural disagreement (the firm/they), and scores a miserable 7.2 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale. The large securities firm isn’t identified, and the reader is left wondering what “copy emails” could be.

If an intro is to inform readers what an article is about and to encourage them to continue reading, then this intro fails.

So . . . what might a skilled and experienced editor do with this intro? Perhaps this:

Morgan Stanley was ordered to pay $12.5 million to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the U.S. equivalent of the Financial Services Authority, because the firm failed to produce e-mails during arbitration claims. The large securities firm had claimed that the e-mails were destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The number of words has been reduced by better than 20%, and the edited intro scores 21.4 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale. The mysterious firm is identified, as is the governmental agency that fined it, meaning that the article is much more likely to be found by those searching for it. And it’s much more likely to be read.

If your firm is like most large law firms, then your client alerts, newlsetters, and advisories aren’t doing all they can to help attract new business.

Why? Because they’re not making it convenient for potential clients to contact the authors of those publications, to learn more about them, or to learn more about your firm.

Consider a large law firm’s most recent Consumer Products Marketing newsletter.

Now, suppose this newsletter comes to the attention of a potential client. She wants to learn more about the firm — let’s say she wants to know whether the firm has an office in San Francisco — so she clicks the firm’s logotype at the top of the newsletter. Nothing happens.

What should happen is this: clicking the logotype should bring up the firm’s home page. To the interested reader, that would be a nice convenience.

Let’s say the potential client wants to contact either of the newsletter’s two editors. Their e-mail addresses are displayed at the bottom of the first paragraph, but they’re not set as links ( like this ).

So, rather than just click an e-mail address to fire off a quick query, the reader has to:

1. copy an address,
2. go to her e-mail client,
3. start a new message,
4. paste the e-mail address in the new message,
5. write a subject for the message, and then
6. write the message.

That’s not a big deal, but it’s not as convenient as it could be.

Why not make it easy for potential clients to contact your firm or learn more about it? Why not set links in your PDF files? That way, a reader can just click a link to contact your firm.

It’s so easy to do. And it’s so worthwhile, because potential clients are more likely to contact your firm if you make it convenient for them. (You want your firm’s on-line presence to attract inquiries from potential clients, right?)

And it shows that your firm — unlike so many others — knows how to use features that have been available since the turn of the century: a potential factor in a potential client’s first impression of your firm.

If you assume that the audience for your firm’s client alerts and newsletters consists of pretty busy people, then you’ll make sure those client alerts and newsletters are written for pretty busy people, right?

Experience tells us that some lawyers use far too many words when they write, but excessive verbiage is just the sort of thing that drives busy readers away. So, one thing that editors of client alerts and newsletters need to do is this: get rid of unnecessary words.

One way to do that — and enliven the copy — is to change instances of present perfect tense to simple past tense.

OK. You haven’t taken middle-school English for quite some time so you don’t recall what those two tenses are. Here are a few examples (taken from this client alert):

Present Perfect: The SO sets out the Commission’s preliminary conclusion that Rambus has illegally charged unreasonably high royalties for some patents relating to DRAM technology.

Simple Past: The SO sets out the Commission’s preliminary conclusion that Rambus illegally charged unreasonably high royalties for some patents relating to DRAM technology.

(more…)

Attorneys tend to spend their days writing a certain way — the way of contracts and briefs, provisions and terms, agreements and statements of fact, all for a small audience of judges and clerks and other counsel.

Now, suppose you’re an attorney. And suppose that — rather than writing for a small audience of other attorneys who expect you to provide great detail on something specific — you’re going to write a client alert (or a magazine article, perhaps) for a very large audience that wants to read something interesting.

Then you need to adjust your style. Here’s why:

When you write legal matter, your audience is captive and limited. You don’t have to be interesting. But when you write copy to attract clients — copy for newsletters, alerts, articles, etc. — you must be interesting.

And that’s because you need to draw the audience. When it comes to client alerts and magazine articles, unlike briefs, nobody HAS TO read what you wrote.

Consider the following snippet from a newsletter recently published by a Big Law firm:

Consider the first sentence under the head:

Companies and individuals are becoming increasingly conscious of their carbon footprint—a measure of carbon dioxide emissions, which are believed to contribute to global warming, attributable to their activities.

And note the use of a single em dash to set off the parenthetical expression (i.e., a measure of carbon dioxide emissions, which are believed to contribute to global warming).

The problem here is that an editor didn’t bother to review this newsletter before it was published. Had an editor reviewed this, an old rule would surely have been applied: one to separate; two to enclose.

(more…)

If you’ve never seen it, or you haven’t seen it for a while, check out Linex Legal, “the leading online information portal for the legal profession.”

The top of the home page (i.e., the first thing readers will see) is a quote — an impressive looking endorsement.

Here’s the quote:

“Linex Legal is a terrific one stop shop for all the information I need on a daily basis with a wide range of useful information that is easy to find.”
– Maria Lakio, Legal Affairs Manager, Amercian Express

This is a great service for in-house counsel, especially when shopping for new outside counsel. It makes it easy to compare publications from different firms on a certain topic, or range of topics.

And that’s a good way to see what a firm has to offer.

If your firm’s attorneys write interesting things about things of interest to prospective clients (e.g., proposed legislation, rule changes, court decisions), then you’ll want their pieces to be available through Linex Legal.

You’re an attorney, and most of what you write is read by few. But, you’ve been asked to write a client alert for your firm. Some court issued an important ruling, and it’s up to you to explain what it could mean for some of your firm’s clients (and many of its prospective clients).

You could write the alert the way you usually write, but that probably wouldn’t do much good.

Here’s why: when you write a brief or a memo or part of an agreement — when you write whatever you usually write — your audience is set. You’re not trying to attract a bigger audience. But when you write a client alert, your big goal is (or should be) to attract a bigger audience: the more the better.

The people you’re trying to attract (e.g., prospective clients and those who can influence them) are busy people. Like you, they don’t like to waste time, but they do like to learn about things they consider important. And they know that your firm isn’t the only one to issue a client alert about that important ruling. They have options.

Here’s something you can do to help attract and retain readers: cut unnecessary words; take long, drawn-out phrases, and reduce them to their essence; be as brief as can be; don’t use 300 words to say what could be better said in 100 words.

The following samples are from client alerts published by Big Law firms. In each case, we reduce the word count by at least 10%. We do something else, as well — something even more important than being concise. Can you tell what it is?

Original Copy (42 words):

Goodyear argued that each time Ms. Ledbetter was given a smaller raise than comparable men was when the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred and that no such action had occurred within the 180 days prior to the date she filed her charge.

Revised Copy (33 words):

According to Goodyear, the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred when Ms. Ledbetter was given a smaller raise than comparable men, and that had not occurred within 180 days before she filed her charge.

Original Copy (39 words):

Ledbetter alleged that for years several supervisors had given her poor evaluations because she was a woman and, as a result, her pay had not increased as much as her male counterparts, resulting in significant pay disparities over time.

Revised Copy (33 words):

Ledbetter alleged that several supervisors gave her poor evaluations just because she was a woman, and that this went on for years, making her salary significantly less than that of her male counterparts.

Original Copy (59 words):

Ledbetter argued that the paychecks that were issued to her during the EEOC charging period, the 180-day period preceding the filing of her EEOC questionnaire, were each a separate act of discrimination, claiming that the paychecks were unlawful because they would have been larger if she had been evaluated in a nondiscriminatory manner prior to the EEOC charging period.

Revised Copy: (51 words)

Ledbetter argued that, during the 180-day period before she filed her EEOC questionnaire, each paycheck issued to her was a separate act of discrimination. She claimed that those paychecks were unlawful because they would have been larger if she had been evaluated in a nondiscriminatory manner before the EEOC charging period.

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Now, you might think that all we’ve done is reduce the word count by at least 10% in each of the above examples. But, we’ve done much more than that. In each case, we’ve made the copy easier to read, as well. And that’s a key element of writing for readers.

You’re writing a client alert about something or other, and your goal is this: to promote yourself and your firm. Obviously, the alert can’t achieve your goal if people don’t read it.

To get people (e.g., prospective clients) to read the alert, you need to give it a good, solid opening. Without that, your alert will go unread. People will read the opening, and then move on to something else. You will have wasted your time writing it and – if the opening is very poorly done – the alert can do more harm than good. It can drive people away from you and your firm. It can leave them with the impression that your firm is just joking about its commitment to excellence.

To be effective, the opening to a client alert needs to:
1. Clearly explain what the alert is about.
2. Be well written.
3. Be interesting.

Let’s take a look at the opening of an alert written by two senior attorneys at a Big Law firm. Here it is:

A growing number of agri-food companies in the global food supply chain are adopting agriculture sustainability standards. These companies include seed suppliers, producers, processors, distributors, restaurants, and supermarkets. The reasons for this movement are complex. Factors include an emerging business interest in corporate social responsibility, consumer demand, and a growing awareness of all that is involved in the making of a food product. Whatever the reasons, agri-food companies publish agriculture sustainability standards in a variety of venues: marketing materials, advertisements, reports, and company websites. These publications range from simple statements of commitment to glossy, sophisticated statements buttressed by matrixes, score cards, and performance indicators.

Agriculture sustainability standards in these speech venues create legal risks for the agri-food company. These risks make it imperative for the agri-food company to seek legal counsel from a lawyer with an expertise in the substantive law underlying these risks and in the legal, policy, and business contexts of production agriculture and the global food supply chain.

Now, let’s see the opening after an editor has touched it. Here it is:

A growing number of agri-food companies – including seed suppliers, producers, processors, distributors, restaurants, and supermarkets – are adopting agricultural sustainability standards. Their reasons are varied, but typically include a growing interest in corporate social responsibility, and increased public awareness of all that is involved in the making of a food product.

Whatever their reasons, agri-food companies often state their sustainability standards in brochures, TV and magazine ads, industry reports, white papers, and corporate Web sites. The statements range from catchy one-liners to sophisticated arguments buttressed by matrices, score cards, and performance indicators.

Whether short or long, these statements carry significant risks for the companies that make them. Hence, it is imperative that these companies seek counsel from lawyers who have expertise in the substantive law, as well as the legal, political, and business concerns affecting the global food supply chain.

Now, suppose you’re counsel for some big food company, you’re looking for information on sustainability standards, and you find this alert. Are you more likely to continue reading the unedited version, or the edited version?

You’re an attorney and you just finished writing a client alert for your firm. Now, all that’s left to do is to send your copy to marketing, right? Hardly so!

That’s your work and — if your marketing department is any good — the alert you wrote is likely to be seen by potential clients, and others. That’s your name on it. So, you want to make sure it looks right.

You sent the marketing department a Micrsoft Word file, but that’s not what was published. The folks in marketing (and IT) did quite a few things to produce the alert.

If you want to make sure they did a good job, look at what they did. Look at the published alert.

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Let’s suppose you’re an attorney for Nossaman Guthner Knox & Elliott LLP, a firm that — like so many others — claims an unabiding commitment to excellence:

For the past 60 years, the firm has been home to some of the brightest legal minds and most creative thinkers in the State. We have developed a proud history that is rich in legal excellence and public leadership.

Now, examine the disclaimer at the bottom of the alert you wrote. If it looks like this, you’ve discovered a notable problem:

This message is being sent to you in compliance with proposed Federal legislation for commercial e-mail (S.1618 - Section 301). Pursuant to Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S. 1618, further transmissions to you by the sender of this e-mail may be stopped at no cost to you by submitting a request to REMOVE in the subject line to info@nossaman.com or by clicking ‘unsubscribe’ above.

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The disclaimer must have been written before CAN-SPAM became the law; and that was nearly four years ago!

This is weird: the disclaimer offers a way to stop “further transmissions,” but the alert wasn’t sent to you. You went to your firm’s Web site, and selected the alert.

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If you wouldn’t consider visiting a potential client unless your shoes are shined, your hair is combed, and your hands are cleaned, then you wouldn’t publish something without reviewing it first, right?

Anything you put your name to can form a potential client’s first impression of YOU. You don’t want that first impression tarnished because of the errors of others, especially if you should have caught those errors and fixed them. And you do check everything you put your name to, right?