Set in Style

Most plepoe can.  

And most people can read this:

Gevin teh wya we raed, the oerdr of the ltteres in wrods dseno’t mtaetr. Waht’s iproamtnt is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it. Tihs is bcuseae poeple don’t raed each leettr invidiudally, but eahc wrod as a wlohe.

And you tghuhot corerct slpeling was so ipmorantt!  

Now, if you work in the marketing department of a large law firm, and you’re responsible for the design or production of your firm’s client alerts and newsletters, you might find this exercise instructive:

Make a copy of the garbled text (above). Then, set it alone on a page. Set it in 14-pt type, and a column 6 inches wide (there should be 6 to 8 lines of copy).

On one page, set it all upper-case; on another, set it all lower-case; on another, set it mixed-case in Times-Roman; and on another, set it mixed-case in Arial.

Then, do a survey. Stop coworkers in the hallway and ask them to read one version or another.

Do they prefer to read garbled copy in the serif face, or the sans-serif face?

____________
There’s a good reason why professional publishing companies almost always set body copy in a serif face, rather than a sans-serif face and that’s because it’s easier to read.

(Go to your local bookstore and browse through some magazines and books published by the pros; you won’t find much body copy set in a sans-serif face.)

Now, take a look at your firm’s client alerts and newsletters and ask yourself this: why in the world are youy setting body copy in a sans-serif face? The pros don’t do it, so why should you?

When you find the answer, please let me know (by commenting below).

Years ago, when Apple’s Macintosh made it possible for the masses to become typesetters and page designers, the pros laughed at the ransom-note nature of the results. The masses were mixing and matching typefaces and design elements in a way no well-trained typesetter or artist would, and the results were often hideous.

Now, the masses are designing Web sites and blogs and — once again — many of the results cause the pros to cringe.

So . . . if you’re setting type (say, for your firm’s client alerts) or you’re designing Web sites or blogs, you might want to get hip to why the pros consistently do things the way they do.

One good source is Usability News, published by the Department of Psychology at Witchita State University.

Here are a few articles that the marketing folks at big law firms might appreciate:

On white space and readability

On line length

On the use of serif and sans-serif fonts

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…)

For some reason, lots of Big Law firms like to use itsy-bitsy type for their Web sites. This is odd, because tiny type — hard as it is to read — tends to repel, rather than attract, readers.

Why would any publisher (law firm or otherwise) do such a thing?

Consider the intro to Winstead’s IP practice description:

Compare the above to the intro to Thelen Reid’s IP practice description:

It’s no contest. Thelen Reid’s copy is much easier to read than Winstead’s.

Sure, anyone wanting to read copy at Winstead’s site can crank up the type size in their browser (and then crank it back down when they go to another site), but why make anyone go through the effort?

Here’s a tip to all the Big Law firms that use tiny type: consider your readers, and what’s most convenient for them.

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.

____________
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.

____________
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.

____________
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?

A Nifty Tool for anyone drafting or producing legal documents is Legal Speller, “a classic American law dictionary” that contains 20,000 legal terms. It works with WordPerfect and Word, and sells for $80.

A law firm — one consistently ranked as having the very best intellectual property practice — decides to publish a a series of primers on copyrights and trademarks and patents and such.

The firm’s motive is to drum up business, and this looks like a promising way to do it, because if one of these primers gets into the right person’s hands at the right time, it could yield a fortune!

But it has to be done right. If it’s not done right, it’s a waste of time, at best.

For some reason, the firm decides not to bring in an editor.

In this post, we look at the effect of the firm’s penny-wise/pound-foolish approach to publishing.

Here’s the opening paragraph of the firm’s primer on copyrights:

Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of “original works of authorships,” which gives them the exclusive right to make copies. Copyright protection derives from the constitutional grant of power to the United States Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors. . . the exclusive Right to their. . . Writings.” (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 ) To this end, Congress has enacted a succession of Copyright Acts and amendments, beginning in 1790. Much of the history of copyright is the story of law following technological developments as old as wax cylinder recordings and the photocopier, and as new as the internet and file-swapping through the use of peer-to-peer networks.

And here is what that opening might have been had the firm engaged an editor:

In the United States, copyright protection stems from the power of Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Tımes to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

The current law — the Copyright Act of 1976 — guarantees authors of “original works” exclusive rights to those works. It also provides a way for authors to protect and enforce their rights.

This paper gives an overview of copyright law. It also presents some things authors and others — from software developers to traditional publishing companies to the newest types of publishers — can do to protect and enforce their rights.

____________
Let’s take a look at what the editor did with the opening. What changes did he make, and why did he make them?

Consider the very first sentence of the original. Obviously, what it says is not true: copyright does not give authors “the exclusive right to make copies.” Copyright is the right to make copies.

The edited version claims that the law guarantees authors certain rights, which is true. According to the U.S. Copyright Office, “Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) . . . .”

The edited version doesn’t claim that copyright is just “the exclusive right to make copies.” It’s more than that.

Consider this peculiar phrase in the first sentence of the original: original works of authorships. What can that mean?

To find out, let your fingers do the searching. Ask the good folks at Google to find other instances of this peculiar phrase.

According to Google, the phrase appears a total of four times (five times after I post this article), so it’s certainly not very popular.

Delete the last character in the phrase and try the search once more. Presto! According to Google, the phrase “original works of authorship” appears 129,000 times.

Note: Had the editor done nothing more than delete one character from this primer, it might have helped people looking for information on copyrights find it. It might have helped the piece achieve its goal of drumming up new business.

The last sentence in the original introduces a new topic (the history of copyright) and suggests that — even though copyright has been around since the 1500s — it’s only “as old as wax cylinder recordings” that were introduced in the late 1800s.

In place of that, the edited version simply gives the reader an idea of the scope of the piece. And there are some very good reasons why the pros do that. Among others, it helps readers decide whether they should continue reading, or move on.

Want to breed readers as potential clients? Cater to them!

____________
Let’s compare the readability of the original to that of the edited version. The Flesch Reading Ease (a standard measure of readability) of the original is 37.1; the Flesch Reading Ease of the edited version is 45.4.

Let’s see what happens when we cut the constitutional copy from both versions. Then the Flesch Reading Ease of the original drops to 24.8 while the Flesch Reading Ease of the edited version rises to 51.4. In other words, excepting the constitutional copy, the edited version is twice as readable as the original.

Is this important? You bet it is! Studies consistently show that readers are repelled by poor readability. And repelling readers is no way to attract clients.

____________
There’s an old adage: anything worth doing is worth doing right. Surely that applies to your firm’s marketing materials.

I was reviewing amicus briefs for United States v Williams when I found something interesting.

Compare the type from this brief prepared by Winston & Strawn:

To the type from this brief submitted by the American Center for Law & Justice:

It looks like Winston & Strawn — which claims to be “among the most technologically advanced law firms in the world” — doesn’t know how to set type quite right, or doesn’t care to.

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.

____________
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?

____________
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.

____________
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?

. . . 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!”

____________
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.