Redlines

Person marking paper with red pen

Revising an Order

by

Vol. 100 No. 4 (2016) | Steady As She Goes

Read More »

Person marking paper with red pen , , ,

At Least Do The Easy Stuff

by

Vol. 105 No. 1 (2021) | The Courts Held

In these two examples, I have done very little rewriting. I simply used plain words and cut unnecessary words (including the egregiously unnecessary parentheticals). And in the second one, I […]

Read More »

Person marking paper with red pen

Hold the Parentheticals, Please

by

Vol. 101 No. 1 (2017) | Citizen-centered Courts

Our writing guru Joseph Kimble offers tips for enlisting the dash and for avoiding legalese and silly, distracting parentheticals. Original According to the Plaintiff, Defendants Exxon Mobil Corporation (“Exxon”), Badger […]

Read More »

Person marking paper with red pen , ,

A better first paragraph, please

by

Vol. 101 No. 2 (2017) | Can science save justice?

Start strong. Our writing guru, Joseph Kimble, breaks down an opinion’s first paragraph to show a better way. Original Pending before the Court is a letter motion by plaintiff Amy […]

Read More »

Person marking paper with red pen

On Names, Pronouns, and Paragraphing

by

Vol. 104 No. 3 (2020-21) | Judges on the March

Lawsuits involve people. And rather than turn them into a disembodied “Plaintiff” and “Defendant,” opinions might better use their names. The opinions will be more direct and more human. (Of […]

Read More »

Person marking paper with red pen

Headings, please. The more, the better

by

Vol. 104 No. 2 (2020) | Coping with COVID

REDLINES If there’s a good reason why many judicial opinions don’t use informative headings, I haven’t heard it. For readers, headings are a boon to navigating through the opinion. And […]

Read More »

Person marking paper with red pen

The Plague of String Citations

by

Vol. 104 No. 1 (2020) | A Clearer View

Check out the original paragraph from this opinion, which dealt with a motion to quash two subpoenas on grounds of attorney-client privilege. In the entire 262-word paragraph, covering 20 lines, […]

Read More »

Person marking paper with red pen

Zap Multiword Prepositions, Please

by

Vol. 102 No. 2 (2018) | Rights That Made The World Right

Probably the worst small-scale fault in legal writing is unnecessary prepositional phrases, a fault that this column will keep going after. A noxious variant is the multiword preposition — a […]

Read More »

Go Light on Heavy Connectors

by

Vol. 103 No. 2 (2019) | Pay NCAA athletes?

One of the easiest ways to significantly improve all forms of legal writing is to replace heavy logical connectors with lighter ones (or none at all, where appropriate). Unfortunately, the […]

Read More »

Redlines

Let’s ditch unnecessary procedural detail

by

Vol. 102 No. 1 (2018) | Forensic Fail

This Redlines column looks different from the previous ones. For one thing, it doesn’t have any redlines — but rather a simple before and after. Our writing guru, Joseph Kimble, […]

Read More »