Set in Style

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?

As an attorney, you’re used to writing for a particular audience — judges, their clerks, and other attorneys. If you’ve been at it for some time, you’ve developed, or adopted, a style for that audience.

Suppose you’re called upon to write for a different audience. Suppose you’re asked to write for an audience composed of corporate counselors, the people who hire and fire them, and other attorneys. Suppose you’re asked to write a Client Alert about something significant.

You’re addressing a different audience for a different purpose, so it makes sense to use a different style.

If you don’t have another style, try this:

1. Find something you wrote that describes a sequence of events.
   
2. Read a few articles in a newspaper.
   
3. Rewrite what you wrote as if it was going to appear in the newspaper.
   
4. Make believe your salary is based on how happy the newspaper’s editor is with the results of Step 3.
   

If you rightfully imagine a big salary, then — the next time you’re called upon to write a Client Alert about something significant — just follow Step 3 and Step 4.

People will be impressed.

Thelen Reid is sitting on top of $500 billion!

How can that be?

Here’s the deal: The Social Security Administration collects taxes on behalf of workers — including those using bogus SSNs. Rather than put money into bogus accounts, the SSA puts all the money for bogus SSNs into something called the Earnings Suspense Account. Given the dramatic rise in the number of workers using bogus SSNs, there’s now over $500 billion in that account!

So . . . how does Thelen Reid get to sit on top of all this money?

(more…)

A potential client is doing some research: he’s looking into the legal implications of sharing a vacation property with his brother and his sister and their families.

It’s Sunday morning, and he’s at home, looking for informal legal advice. He fires up Google and searches for “Family Property Agreement.”

And then he finds this: a client alert titled SHARING A FAMILY RETREAT: THE FIVE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF A FAMILY PROPERTY AGREEMENT.

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Go ahead and take a look at the alert. Give it a read. If you’re short on time, read just the first paragraph (the one that’s supposed to grab the reader’s attention and inspire him to continue reading). Here it is:

Sharing a treasured family retreat can be a traumatic and divisive issue unless handled with great care.  For example, who decides which family members can use the property during optimal times such as July or over the holidays?  Who decides when it is time to replace the pool or build a new guest house, and how these capital costs are to be paid? What is the annual budget? What if one owner won’t pay his or her share?  Who decides to hire or fire the groundskeeper, a gardener or the cook?  What if some, but not all, of the owners want to sell the property?  What if one owner dies and faces significant inheritance taxes?  What are the rights of any divorced non-lineal spouse?

The first problem is obvious: questions are not examples of traumatic and divisive issues, are they? We know what the authors meant, but they didn’t express themselves clearly, and that’s not a good way to advertise legal services, is it?

The second problem isn’t quite so striking. It has to do with audience. Who is the target audience for this piece? If it’s a potential client looking for advice, then using a cryptic term like non-lineal spouse sends the wrong message. It says, “We speak to you in a way you can’t really understand.”

Quite obviously, the attorneys who wrote this alert are very sharp thinkers. But the firm they work for doesn’t provide them what they (and all good writers) need. It doesn’t provide them an editor. If it did, that opening paragraph would engage readers, rather than leave them wondering if this alert is representative of the firm’s concept of excellence.

So, what might become of that first paragraph if the authors have access to an editor? Perhaps this:

Sharing a family retreat can be a very rewarding experience. Then again, it can lead to some serious disputes. What happens when there are competing claims to use the property over a holiday weekend? What happens when one family member wants to build a new pool house, and another thinks the old one just needs some repair? What if someone’s not paying his or her fair share of the costs, or is letting friends use the property? What if one owner dies and faces significant inheritance taxes?

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Read the very last line of the alert:

To opt-out from future communications please visit: http://www.acmelawfirm.com/vtu/p70978671VVyMcf98

This is absurd. Imagine this: imagine picking up a copy of a newsletter, and then finding instructions in it on how to not get any more copies of it!

The firm’s upper management claims that, “We know that focusing on excellence works,” but adding an unsubscribe notice to a Web page doesn’t support the claim. In fact, it suggests the lack of an essential ingredient for excellence: attention to detail.

Here’s my guess: this firm’s upper management is up to its ears in far more pressing matters. If it considered this for just a minute — if it considered the potential cost of not having a system in place to make sure attorney-authored articles aren’t published before they’re ready to be published — then it would employ an editor. And it wouldn’t wait for some embarrassing episode to occur before it made sure its publications supported its claims about excellence.

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It’s an odd thing. My guess is the two lawyers who wrote this alert regularly spend good money to get their hair done, because they know that appearances certainly do matter. But an editor?

Over the past few weeks, there’s been so much bad news about products imported from China. So, you’d expect law firms advising companies manufacturing products in China to issue client alerts related to all the recent product safety news, right?

Wrong! I just checked Linex Legal, a clearinghouse for law firm client alerts, and Big Law firms are — so far — ignoring the news.

. . . is worth doing right!

Lots of Big Law firms give great weight to that old adage, but others act as if it’s a very strange notion.

What gets me to mention this old adage? I’ll tell you:

The other day, I ran across this client alert (published by a very large firm that emphasizes the quality of its work) that had a misspelling in the first paragraph. Here it is:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, pulled the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill on June 7 so that the Senate could move to other business.  He stated that the bill is not dead, but many deservers now question whether major immigration reform in the next two years is likely.

The misspelling is deservers.

Since I have considerable experience editing client alerts, I thought the attorney who wrote this alert would be happy to have me polish it. I mean . . . an attorney who charges people $400/hr for his expertise must care about the quality of his writing, right? Wrong!

So, I decided to review some other alerts this attorney wrote, and here are just a few of the rusted gems I discovered in 10 minutes:

Not my idea of a vacation, but medical tourism is becoming increasingly popular as health care service offerings abroad even while costs at home increase.

By make this also a state law, however, this empowers state law enforcement officials to take action without waiting for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency or the Department of Labor, the two federal agencies charged with oversight on the federal law.

These companies provide the economic engine the drives not only the tech sector, but so much of our economy.

I discovered a number of other odd things about this firm’s alerts. For instance, at the bottom of each alert, the following notice:

If required, put the stationery disclaimer here.

That’s a strange notice to add to a client alert. And right below that notice, there was this:

If you wish to opt out of these communications, visit http://www.acmelawfirm.com/vtu/p70978671VVyMcf98

The client alert was posted as an HTML file. It wasn’t sent to me. I just selected it from the firm’s list of alerts.

Well . . . if the attorney who wrote these alerts doesn’t care about misspellings and nonsensical assertions, the firm’s marketing people surely will, right? Wrong!

I contacted the marketing manager, but she couldn’t be bothered. “Talk to someone in Global Marketing,” she told me. So, I called the firm’s director of global marketing and left a phone message. This morning, she returned the call and I explained what it is I do: I edit client alerts; I polish them; I make their authors and their publishers look as good as can be.

“We have an offshore group that edits our alerts, so thanks for the offer but we really don’t need your services at this time.”

Yeah, right! It looks like somebody who speaks Hindi is doing the editing for this firm. It really does.

I guess I just don’t get it. I know attorneys who charge people $400/hr and each of them is so concerned with appearance. Before they go and speak to a potential client, they get their shoes polished and their hair cut and their nails manicured. They know appearance matters.

Then why would an expensive attorney not bother to engage an editor to make sure that a publication — one with his name attached to it and one which might be read by hundreds or thousands of readers, many potential clients — why would he not bother to have an editor polish it?

I suppose he figures that client alerts (and those who edit them) are not worthwhile. And I suppose his figuring his flawed. By saving a few bucks on not having an editor review his work, he’s sacrificing big bucks by scaring potential clients away. They’re looking at his work and asking themselves, “if he doesn’t know the difference between observers and deservers, do we want him handling our work? Would we want to work with this firm if they put their name to such slop?”

Of course not! At $400/hr, “Hell No!”

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Update — 20 Aug 2007: I just reviewed the latest alert written by this attorney. He certainly needs an editor, else the alert would not contain nonsense like this:

It is unlawful in the US for employers to employ employees who are unauthorized for such employment in the US.

I’m editing a client alert for Acme Law, LLP. The final draft begins with a 223-word intro set as a single paragraph covering three separate topics. In short order, I whittle it down to 103 words set as two paragraphs, each covering a single topic.

After that, I hit upon lots of copy like this:

While Congress funded the FHA at the time of its creation in 1934, the FHA repaid those funds by 1940, and it has been entirely self-funded since that time with proceeds from borrowers’ mortgage insurance being used to operate the program.

I do some fact checking, and then I whittle it down to this:

While Congress funded the FHA at the time of its creation in 1934, the agency repaid those funds by 1940. It has been entirely self-funded since then.

When I’m done, what had been a 4,260-word article — essentially a verbose rehash of information available at the FHA’s Web site, plus some of the firm’s significant representations — is down to a more palatable (and more likely to be read) 3,408 words.

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Most client alerts deal with technical issues, and most are written for an audience of lawyers versed in a particular area of the law. Even so, most alerts are written as if the audience consisted not of corporate counsel, but of law clerks. That’s why they so often begin by defining household terms like SEC or IRS, even when the target audience consists of attorneys well-versed in securities and tax law.

Writing an alert designed to attract or inform in-house counsel is one thing, but writing an alert for a much wider audience (e.g., bankers and mortgage brokers and business journalists) is quite another. The alert we’re discussing is intended for a broad audience. It’s intended to gain media mention and to attract new clients. The attorneys who wrote it told me so.

And that’s why I’m tossing each and every unnecessary word and phrase I can find. You see, the most coveted potential clients (our key audience) have lots of money to spend on outside counsel, which means their time is very precious. So, they’d much rather read an edited (i.e. polished) alert that’s shorter and easier to read than a longer, unedited version.

If an alert begins with three paragraphs stuffed into one, then business journalists won’t bother to read it at all (because their time is also precious), and they won’t bother to contact the author for a quote.

Here’s a simple rule for client alerts: when it comes to how many words you use to express an idea, less is more. (Consider this quote, often attributed to Mark Twain: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”)

A client alert is not for the pleasure of the author. Its purpose is to influence the valuable reader, who considers fluff (more words than necessary) a waste of precious time. Forgetting that can be costly. All the time an attorney put into writing an alert can be wasted, unless — of course — an editor polishes the alert before it’s published.

In some cases, an attorney’s effort is worse than wasted. What had been a potential client is no longer interested in the attorney or his firm because something that attorney wrote left such a bad first impression. (“If a misplaced comma is worth $2.3 million, do I trust this attorney to prepare an important legal agreement for my company? I think not!”)

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Here’s an article about audience analysis, written by Douglas Abrams, a law professor who’s written several books and whose law review articles have been cited in four Supreme Court decisions. It’s titled The Writer’s Theatre. For attorney-authors who like to make a solid first impression, it’s very well worth a read.