Set in Style

I recently asked John Gillies, the director of practice support at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, for his thoughts on lawyers, how they write what they write, and what attorneys — especially the least experienced among them — can do to improve their writing skills.

If you’re a young associate, listen up. John’s been at it for a while, and he’s got style.

Tell us a bit about the work you do.

The primary focus of the work that my colleague and I do is to help lawyers practice more effectively and efficiently by finding ways to eliminate the barriers that prevent them from doing that. So, while a part of our work involves traditional knowledge management (KM), it’s broader than that. (Our concept of “practice support” is, therefore, quite different from how that term is used in U.S. firms, where I believe the term is used more in connection with practice group support at the tactical and logistical level.)

Our KM activities have, until recently, focused on two primary activities: developing precedent banks and creating repositories of annotated lawyer work product. (There is often an expertise location aspect to KM activities as well.)

The major drawback to this approach, in my view, is that it focuses on a just-in-case model of content delivery, where time and effort are devoted to capturing content without knowing exactly who might use it or under what circumstances, as well as how valuable it might be to the ultimate user.

While there is still a role for these traditional activities, our focus has been much more on trying to address the obstacles that lawyers actually face in getting their work done effectively and efficiently.

The first thing I did when I arrived at my firm was to hold focus group meetings with a large number of lawyers, paralegals, students, and assistants to ask them what those obstacles might be. (We ended up talking to about one third of the lawyers at the firm.) From their responses, we developed a practice support strategy, aligned with the firm’s strategic plan (obviously!), to address the priority items we discovered from that process.

Given the rise of social media, will writing skills be more or less important in the future?

On the one hand, I would like to be optimistic and think that the proliferation of writers, particularly on the Internet, means that readers have greater exposure to a wider variety of articles. The quality of that writing is going to vary from excellent to execrable. That should mean that high quality writing can distinguish itself more easily from the dross. So, assuming that readers will tend to migrate to well written content, that might imply that the good will tend to drive out the bad.

On the other hand, if I’m pessimistic, then we’re actually moving towards a “twitterization” of communication, so that what is valued most is brevity. It’s almost impossible to demonstrate your superior writing skills if you’re limited to 140 characters. If that’s the case, then readers won’t be able to distinguish the good from the bad because it will all look the same.

Having said that, I know from experience that there are always those for whom good writing and proper use of grammar is important; for them, the bad stuff is an immediate turn-off. (I know; I’m one of them.)

I would like to think that discerning readers will tend to be more highly concentrated among decision-makers, so the investment in good writing that impresses them can potentially pay dividends.

Having said that, I must acknowledge that I have absolutely no scientific basis to back up my speculation.

Law firms, especially the larger ones, function as publishers. Why do so few firms have editors?

For starters, lawyers (and the firms they work in) tend not to see the business development benefits of writing for a non-legal audience. Even the business development benefits of traditional personal marketing (such as joining the Lions Club) are hard to quantify. So a perhaps unstated question is, what’s the payoff for my doing this sort of writing?

As well, most non-professional writers (not just lawyers) can be extremely prickly about suggested editorial changes to their drafting, perhaps because of insecurity about the quality of their writing.

So, if the payoff for writing for a non-legal audience is far from obvious and the clearest result of hiring an editor would be that you’re being told that your writing isn’t good enough, why would you choose to add another person to the payroll (in other words, the editor) to perform that role?

Why are so many lawyers such bland writers?

I should clarify that, while there may indeed be bland writers amongst lawyers writing for a general audience, there are a good number of very accomplished writers who write for a legal audience.

From the first day of law school, the focus of one’s career is, in fact, on legal writing, which is clearly a different beast from “normal” writing. The audience for legal writing is other lawyers, whose writing (not surprisingly) is in a similar style.

So, just as different magazines (like The New Yorker or The Economist) have their own house style, lawyers too have developed a house style, except our “house” extends to all lawyers who have ever existed (“together with all those who may from time, now or in the future, exist, including without limiting the generality of the foregoing,…”).

When those same writers turn to writing for a non-legal audience, though, it becomes more difficult to turn off the house style. As well, it is easier to write about legal issues using the same intellectual framework and language that you use to analyze those issues.

Finally, as any good novelist or non-fiction writer will attest, good writing is just plain hard work. Since there are no clear incentives to writing for the non-legal market, it’s hard to justify spending the time going through numerous drafts to arrive at something that reads well for that market, particularly if you don’t do it on a regular basis.

What can a lawyer do (what should a lawyer do) to further develop his or her writing skills?

There are several possible steps. It’s most important to realize that writing for the general public is fundamentally different from writing for an audience of lawyers. In other words, the style and approach of writing a legal update is nothing like what is needed when drafting a contract, a litigation document, or a law journal article. To help get there, it’s very useful to read and analyze business-related articles in leading publications that cater to an educated readership (such as The New York Times or The Economist).

It will be very quickly apparent that the authors for those sorts of publications don’t do all sorts of things that lawyers are used to doing in their legal updates, such as using case citations, having large numbers of Capitalized Terms for even the Most Obvious Things, or using convoluted language. Those authors take pains to make their points clearly, concisely, and logically.

Next, I would recommend reading good quality content of any type that interests you. If you like novels, then read good novels. If your preference is more for non-fiction, then read good-quality biographies or histories, or periodicals such as The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly. Pay particular attention to especially well written passages; take some time to analyze what makes them work.

Finally, there are books that can help guide you, and several legal drafting blogs, like Ken Adams’s Adams Drafting, and Ben Oppipari’s Literary Legs.

What about law schools? What could they do to better equip their students for the real world?

Their focus is on an academic discipline, to turn out law profs, and only incidentally to graduate people who choose to practice law.

I’m not sure most law schools are interested in developing writing skills so their graduates will communicate clearly. (Indeed, if you took a cross-section of academic writing generally, I don’t think you’d conclude that academics strive for clarity and comprehension in their writing!)

You say many lawyers are insecure about their writing skills. How does that affect their work?

Most people enjoy working at developing the skills they are strong at and tend to avoid what challenges them and makes them feel inadequate. Writing good, “pure” legal content (such as contracts or pleadings) is something on which we focus a huge portion of our energies. But good writing is hard work. And, as I said, writing for a non-legal audience is significantly different from legal writing.

Particularly with so many other needs pressing on their time, it’s a tall order to ask lawyers to devote time to doing something that many know they don’t do well.

Does it do a lawyer any good to write a client alert or an article for a newsletter? Does anyone really read that stuff?

Absolutely! It’s valuable to write for a non-legal audience, for at least three reasons. First, writing for that audience forces you to understand your content well enough that you can explain it to someone who doesn’t have your legal background. Ironically, it can end up making you more knowledgeable about your subject matter.

Second, the skills that you develop in improving your writing for this audience will necessarily transfer over to your legal drafting. The goal in both cases is to make your writing clear and understandable.

Third, and this addresses your second question, surprisingly, people do actually read this stuff. The increasing reliance on Internet search to find relevant content means that the potential scope for your item is much broader than in the “old days,” when print was the only way to reach your audience. Plus, as I’ve said elsewhere, while clients and potential clients are unable to judge the substantive quality of the legal documents that we produce, they can judge how well we write the articles addressed to them. So, your good writing gives potential clients a good reason to choose you over someone else.

I think that it’s very easy for lawyers to get trapped by their legal writing, which they generally do very well, and end up writing everything as if it were for a legal audience. In a sense, those writers assume a very high level of understanding and analysis on the part of the reader, but it’s often over the heads of the general audience, who have not generally gone to law school.

You said earlier that good writing is hard work. What do you mean?

If you read interviews with people who write for a living, they almost all say that good writing is hard work. They will devote hours to ensuring that they have chosen the right words, put together the best way they can, to bring to life some sort of a picture in words.

Certainly there are some exceptions, but as a rule, particularly if one accepts the premise (described most recently in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers) that it takes at least 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to develop expertise, most lawyers have not been able to devote that amount time to this activity. That shouldn’t stop you from trying, though, but you need to recognize that skillful writing does not simply come from writing a few legal updates.

What’s your advice to those now entering the profession? Should they be blogging to increase their visibility, or are they better off working the more traditional business development avenues?

I wouldn’t start a legal blog if I were just starting to practice law. I think a legal blog should pick a niche and focus on providing useful information to people who are interested in the topic and then engaging readers. When you’re starting out, you won’t know enough about a particular niche to speak about it with confidence and authority.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to wait years before you start writing. On the contrary, you should seize every opportunity that presents itself to write for a general audience (and create as many additional opportunities as you can). Hone your craft while your writing is still under the radar, as it were. Then as your technical legal skills have developed to the point where you can start blogging about your particular passion, you will be much further along in your writing abilities.

The two most important things, though, are to write in a way so that readers will want to come back, and to engage with your readers. (Kevin O’Keefe has written a lot about engaging with your blog readers.)

Fundamentally, you are doing the same thing if, say, you join the Lions Club: meeting with people, finding out what they’re interested in, and doing what you can to give them some general advice that they might find helpful. You need, of course, to respect the rules of professional conduct that govern communications by lawyers and, if you’re with a firm, whatever your firm’s social media policies are. But all the successful legal bloggers are able to do that.

What you will find is that, over the long term, your blog will serve as your own personal knowledge management repository. Doug Cornelius, who runs the KM Space and Compliance Building blogs, has written about how his first blog was simply a way to catalogue his own thoughts and content. It grew from there. That’s an important aspect that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Not everyone is cut out to write, though. But I think that those gregarious individuals who feel compelled to reach out to others will see blogging as an ideal medium to do just that.

So, do you have a blog?

Ha, I’ve been caught out! “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Despite what I believe, I have fallen prey to what is probably the most common excuse, namely, “I don’t have the time.” Not that other bloggers, like Mary Abraham and you haven’t encouraged me to start. Let’s just say that it’s something that I plan to do.

Any last words of advice?

Sure: focus on writing well every day, and the benefits will start to become more and more obvious to you. And good luck!

Note: this our last in the series on setting logotype — how to set your firm’s logotype so it displays properly on line, on all devices under all conditions. But don’t fret. We’ve got another series coming up on setting display type on line.

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In our last installment on setting logotype, (Setting Logotype — Part II), we examined why logotypes are usually stored as graphics, rather than text.

Now, let’s see how popular viewers (like web browsers) treat graphics and text differently.

Consider the two words below. The one on the left is text; the one on the right is a graphic (of the one on the left).

One

Zoom way in one this page. As you do, note how the text continues to have smooth edges, but the graphic starts to have rough and fuzzy edges.

Zoom way out of this page. As you do, you can notice the graphic takes on a better appearance than the text; i.e., it has smoother edges than the text.

And the point of all this zooming in and out?

It’s just so you can appreciate my secret recipe for setting good looking logotype, and here it is:

Set your logotype four times larger than it will appear on-screen, and then have the browser shrink it down to size.

That way, it will look it’s best on the greatest number of devices (desktops, laptops, BlackBerries, iPods, iPads, and who knows what’s next) under the greatest range of conditions.

That’s it.

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Oh . . . one more thing — consider large, well known companies, outfits like Coke and Apple and Ford. Look at examples of their logos and logotypes, which appear in many more places than those of law firms. Notice the consistency, and the quality wherever they appear.

There’s a reason for that — big, successful companies really care about how they appear, and for good reason.

If you want to be set in style, your logotype must appear professional. You should be sure it is, especially if you want to seem as one who takes pride in your work.

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Now . . . that’s it! (Unless someone asks “Which graphics format do you use to store the logotype? GIF? PNG? JPEG?”)

Your law firm probably doesn’t have a logo. Few do. But it very likely has a logotype, which it uses in place of a logo.

What’s the difference between them?

A logo is an image; a logotype is stylized type.

Logo	Logotype

Both logo and logotype (and other elements) distinguish one entity (e.g., person, business, agency) from all others, and these visual cues are so effective that most any substantial business or organization has a logotype; the larger the outfit, the more likely it is to have a logo as well.

And most outfits, regardless of size, have a style guide – a guide that describes lots of things, including the visual identity for an entity, like how its logo and its logotype should appear.

(more…)

Before you start writing that client alert, grab a newspaper and a cup of coffee.

If you can, get a widely read paper: The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Chicago Tribune. If not, find a paper that carries AP stories.

Read a few stories. At least, read the first few paragraphs of a few stories.

Now, here’s my good advice: when you write your alert, write like a journalist.

You’ll be glad you did.

(more…)

Law firms need editors for this reason: they’re publishers. They publish client alerts and newsletters, seminar materials and by-lined articles authored by their attorneys. They publish web sites and some publish blogs.

Now, here’s a good example of what happens when there’s no editor between an attorney/author and his target audience:

All of these crimes can carry stiff penalties. In the cases of child pornography and online solicitation of a minor, a conviction for can mean having to register as a sex offender in addition to potential jail time. It is essential to thoroughly investigate all potential factual and legal defenses, police procedure during the investigation, and any possibility your constitutional rights have been violated.

Consider the second sentence:

In the cases of child pornography and online solicitation of a minor, a conviction for can mean having to register as a sex offender in addition to potential jail time.

An editor would certainly strike the errant article and preposition, but he’d do more. He’d make the last phrase (in addition to potential jail time) parallel the one before it (having to register as a sex offender), like so:

In cases of child pornography and online solicitation of a minor, a conviction can mean having to register as a sex offender and serving time in jail.

Why would he do that? For the reader’s sake, and the author’s too.

Here’s what I find surprising — a large law firm claims excellence in all it does, but there’s a typo, or a misspelling, or a grammatical or logical error in the first line of type on the home page of the firm’s Web site. And it stays there for quite some time, as if no one at the firm looks at the home page, or cares much about errors.

Oh well. Perhaps most corporate counselors who hire large law firms don’t really care if those firms are sincere about their commitment to excellence.

Perhaps I’m more fussy than most, but I won’t hire a lawyer who can’t write well (esp. one who doesn’t even try) to write a license agreement or a contract. No way!

And I’m not alone. There must be corporate counselors out there who are just as fussy as I. There must be those who are not willing to spend $600 per man-hour for attorneys who makes too many obvious errors.

If you want to impress fussy corporate counselors, you need to dot all your eyes and cross all your teas, or they’ll notice, and that’s because they look for small details, the way drill instructors do.

“Does this firm really pay attention to detail? If it does, its Web site won’t say it doesn’t.”
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If you are sincere in your commitment to excellence, then, in addition to the regular attention you pay to detail day in, day out, you’ll find an annual review of your firm’s publishing effort’s central nervous system — your firm’s Web site — worthwhile.

Here’s what I recommend. Each year, check the following:

1. Activity and Error Reports — These reports help you see what visitors are looking at, and what they’re not; they also show what visitors are trying to see, but can’t.
2. Content of Top-level Pages — If it’s been a year since anyone at the firm has read this material, it’s time to review it again, especially for timeliness.
3. Date-sensitive Content — Does the site say your next event happened six months ago? To visitors, that says you’re not on top of things.
4. The Site’s Popularity — Does the site have a better Alexa ranking than last year?
5. The Site’s Functionality — How does the site look on a BlackBerry or iPhone?

This article discusses my recommendations in greater detail.

I’m reviewing the activity log for Set in Style.

I’m surprised to find that a two-year-old post got lots of hits yesterday. I wonder why.

I review the old post, which is about not wasting readers’ time — it’s good advice for attorneys who tend to use far more words than necessary.

The old post contains this link to a client alert published by O’Melveny & Myers LLP, but the link is outdated and no longer works. Click it, and you’re presented with this fruitless message:

The page you requested was not found. Please check the URL path and try again.

Well, you can check the URL all day if you like, but it won’t help you find what you want.

The problem?

The firm revised its Web site last year, but a piece of engineering was left undone.

(more…)

Your car isn’t acting quite right and you need a mechanic.

So . . . you describe what’s wrong with the car to two mechanics, and they speculate like so:

Mechanic #1:

“The polarized input capacitor of the voltage regulator might be allowing too much variation in potential, and that’s causing the negative feedback servo control loop to malfunction.”

Mechanic #2:

“It’s either the alternator, the regulator, or the battery gone bad.”

Now . . . which mechanic gets to work on your car?

If you’re like most, you’ll choose the one you can understand.

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Consider the following copy*, the opening paragraph to a short article describing a recent court ruling:

On November 10, 2009, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District ruled that any maintenance due a former spouse as part of a divorce decree terminates upon the remarriage of the party receiving the payments so long as there is no express agreement otherwise. The Court went on to hold that the use of the word “only” was insufficient to show this express agreement. See the opinion here.

That was published by an attorney “dedicated to helping victims of personal injuries and representation of individuals facing divorce and/or child custody disputes including child support, spousal support/alimony, paternity claims, adoptions, and other domestic issues.”

But it works against the attorney, a solo who helps people with the legal aspects of divorce. And that’s because it’s so danged formal and long-winded.

Who would you rather call if you needed a divorce lawyer — an attorney “dedicated to helping victims of personal injuries and people dealing with divorce, child support, alimony, adoptions, and other domestic issues,” or the one who wrote the intro above?

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If you’re an attorney and you want to tell prospective clients about some court ruling that affects them, use their lingo, like so:

An appeals court in Missouri ruled that a husband doesn’t need to pay maintenance (alimony) to his former wife after she remarries even though the divorce decree says he does.

The intro to a story shouldn’t weigh readers down with details, the way the intro to a brief does. It shouldn’t contain lots of facts. All it should do is this: encourage the reader to continue reading.

If you’re writing to a very broad audience (e.g., middle-income people who might need a divorce lawyer), don’t be so formal. You’re not writing a brief, and your audience doesn’t know the law.

Before you start writing, imagine a mechanic, or a doctor, or anyone who might need a divorce lawyer.

Write for that person, not a judge.

Write in such a way that each paragraph encourages readers to continue reading.

Unlike a brief, nobody has to read your story, and if it’s not interesting, they won’t.

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* That copy was revised shortly after I posted this.

I was reading this post about Martindale Hubble making strange comments on lawyers’ blogs, and what most caught my attention though was this:

When it comes to protecting your reputation, this is one simple rule for lawyers to follow: No one cares as much about your reputation as you do.

I read that and I thought, “hmmm . . . it’s the firm’s reputation that they don’t care about; that must be it!” Then I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat outside wondering how I’d been so wrong for so long.

You see, I’d been pitching editorial services to law firms, and — even though I knew better — I’d been acting as if they were like other businesses: organizations that are much more like teams than herds. (For instance, I figured the title Managing Shareholder was more descriptive than figurative.)

I figured that — since law firms care so much about their reputations — it wouldn’t be hard to  pitch editorial services at all. Given that law firms are publishers, and their attorneys are authors, I’d just call, introduce myself as a skilled and experienced editor and voilà: work, work, work!

I’d cruise the Web sites of great big law firms and I’d find endless amounts of work to do. I’d find lame copy like this:

The firm seeks candidates with excellent written and interpersonal skills, which will enable them to deal productively and confidently with clients, co-counsel and opposing counsel. In addition to choosing the finest talent available, the firm offers training, both in an academic setting, as well as on a day-to-day basis through mentoring.

and like this:

Internet and information technology has affected the daily lives of all of us. Whether a young start-up company with nothing but an idea or an established multinational powerhouse, each new innovation brings with it tremendous potential rewards, but also hides risks for the unwary.

Then, I’d call the firm’s marketing department and offer to find and remove all such blemishes (blemishes that could bring nothing but harm to the reputation of any firm that was broadcasting a sincere commitment to excellence).

I figured they’d jump at the chance to work with a skilled and experienced editor who had so much to offer. But, no . . . with few exceptions, they weren’t really interested at all. (Fortunately for me, a few were and still are.)

In fact, in a few cases, the firm’s CMO or marketing manager would get downright testy. Why, if you buy me a cup of coffee, I’ll take the time to tell you about the bizarre run-in I had with Kelly Pepper, Nossaman’s marketing manager.

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What happened was this: I came across this client alert published by Nossaman, and authored by one of its attorneys. I contacted the attorney, told him what sort of work I did, and suggested some ways I could help improve the firm’s alerts, both their appearance and their content.

As I recall, I mentioned to him that his alert had a small notice at the bottom of it which made it seem as if the firm wasn’t aware that the CAN-SPAM act had been passed years earlier. That certainly got his attention.

Well, after he expressed some surprise that anyone had actually read the alert, he said he’d pass my name and contact info on to the marketing department. What I was proposing was up to them, he told me.

Great!

But then I got a terse e-mail and an even terser phone call from Ms. Pepper — “Don’t you ever contact an attorney here ever again!”

Incredible! Absolutely incredible!

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One thing I’ve learned is that the marketing directors for some firms work in abject fear of their firm’s attorneys.

A recent reminder springs from another client alert written by an attorney who — I would presume — cares very much about his reputation. And if he really cares about his reputation, then he’s certainly concerned with how he appears in print, right?

Here’s the first line of the alert:

Recently the 7th Circuit in Sunstar, Inc. v. Alberto-Culver Company provided a reminder to attorneys engaging in a business transaction between domestic and a foreign parties.

Notice the grammatical error (and several others) in that line.

Certainly, an attorney who likes to look good before others would want that fixed lickety-split, especially since the alert is about poorly written agreements and the grief they can bring.

In fact, he’d want a bunch of things fixed in that article. Of course he would. What an easy sale this would be!

Well, I contacted the marketing director and she told me that if she brought this to the attorney’s attention and said it should be fixed, she’d probably get canned!

How does a law firm that claims a commitment to quality dare to threaten an employee who strives to achieve quality on behalf of the firm and its attorneys?

Incredible!

As fearless as I am, I called Scott Hervey, the attorney who authored the alert. For sure, he’d be interested in having me review his work. Certainly, he would want me to fix things like this:

Accordingly, the court turned to Japanese trademark law to determine whether the holder of a senyoshiyoken is permitted to use variants of the license the trademark.

and like this:

The court further explained that the longer the term of the license, the less plausible it is to assume that . . . the license was forbidden to make small changes to the licensed trademark.

Apparently not.

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I don’t get it. I know that serious law firms and their attorneys really care about their reputations, but why would an attorney NOT ask an editor to review an alert on the importance of good writing (especially if the alert contains too many examples of bad writing)?

Why . . . I find it . . . simply incredible!

Here’s the original (published by a firm that thinks it doesn’t need an editor):

Effective December 1, 2009, it will be unlawful for any motor vehicle operator to text message while driving. Violations of the new law will constitute an “infraction” punishable by a $100 fine.

Here it is after it’s been touched by an editor:

Beginning December 1, 2009, it will be unlawful to text message while driving in North Carolina. Violators will be subject to a $100 fine.

Any law firm that thinks readers are looking for a firm that likes to make things more complicated (or more convoluted) than necessary is one that could use an editor (if you ask me).