Manual

All lawyers are, in part, professional writers. Most professional writers have style manuals to guide their writing, prepared by major publishers and newspapers and adopted by just about any publication to which the writer wants to submit material. But lawyers have a problem: courts don’t adopt style manuals, nor do government agencies (except for internal use), nor do clients nor any other of the people for whom most of a lawyer’s writing is done. Sometimes law school tries to teach a bit of legal writing (few there have ever actually done it for real, and most of the rest badly need a style manual—and also a dictionary and the grammar book they never read in high school) but mostly you are on your own. The results are usually pretty bad. Therefore, the Bryce Wilson 100 has decided to rush into the breach by providing, as a service to the profession, a Style Manual for lawyers.

Our intent is that the Manual be suitable for pleadings, briefs, wills, correspondence, scholarly articles, and generally everything else that you are likely to have to write. For your convenience, we have omitted all the less-important rules of grammar, etc., and included only the ones you need to worry about. This may mean that, on occasion, you will need to supplement the Manual with a dictionary or something like that, but basically, if it isn’t in here you can wing it.

Herewith, then, the Manual:

The first and very most important thing is to never let your imagination and enthusiasm be throttled by concerns of style. Your job is to do the best you can for your client any way you can, and that doesn’t mean following someone else’s ideas of what is good style and what isn’t. Remember, You’re O.K.— you can write just as well as anybody else can. Anybody who gets to be a lawyer must be pretty smart to begin with, right? Things like outlines, drafts, and revisions restrict creativity, so avoid them.

In fact, writing at all is obsolete. The best way to do a responsive pleading, for example, is to take the other guy’s pleading in one hand, your dictating microphone in the other, and let the creative juices flow. If necessary, let other juices flow. “Flow" is the key. Let your stream of consciousness meander freely. Write it just the way you would say it. When you get to the end, add some more. The judge isn’t going to read it, anyway, so it should be impressively thick.

But don’t forget organization. Organization is the key. Every word should be in a sentence, and every sentence should end in a period. Except rhetorical questions—which you should use a lot of, because everybody will be impressed and nobody will ever be able to think up answers—which should end in a question mark, and really important sentences, including the ones that accuse the other lawyer of doing something crooked, which should end in exclamation points (at least one).

The names of the parties should be in all-capital letters, because the judge looks to see how many times you mention them and scores you on this.

Otherwise, punctuation is vastly overrated. Use commas where you would take a breath. Use semicolons where you aren’t sure. Nobody knows where the paragraphs go, so don’t worry about it. In fact, it’s better not to have any, since they distract the eye. But if you are going to use paragraphs, use a lot; if your sentences are important enough to have paragraphs, let each one have its own.

Footnotes. Footnotes used to be a pain for your secretary but they are easy with word processors, so don’t hesitate. Nobody will read your sources anyway, and they fool people into thinking that you have. And they are good for last-minute ideas, snide remarks, brilliant but irrelevant thoughts, and anything else you can’t jam into the main text but just can’t bear not to say.

Never be clearer than you really have to be. That way you can always explain later that your writing didn’t really mean what everybody thought it did, and you can make sarcastic remarks (in footnotes) wondering how anybody could ever have thought that you meant what you said in the first place. One good rule is this: never name anything, describe it instead. Example: never call a shoe a “shoe”, call it a “form-fitting protective/decorative ambulatory aid.” This is the essence of bureaucratic writing, and look how good it works for bureaucrats. In fact, a good way to study writing is to read closely any CFR volume and the Employees’ Retirement Income Security Act.

Any good style manual should mention syntax. Syntax is a problem. The safest thing is not to have any. If you have some, get it removed if it hurts after meals.

One thing I should have mentioned when I talked about organization is numbering. Divide up things into sections, and number them. That impresses people and shows them you have been reading U.S. Supreme Court opinions. Numbered sections is the equivalent of organization. You should be able to

get at least five discrete levels of numbering, e.g. I(A)(1)(a)(i). Any well-written paper uses all five at least once.

Never forget that, as I said above, I think, I can’t really remember now, so just in case I didn’t I’ll mention it again, never stop short. Keep going until you really get you point home, no matter how long it takes. Great thoughts can’t be rushed: be sure that

[at that point, the original article stopped, having run out of space]