Better Legal Writing: 15 Topics for Advanced Legal Writers [Hardcover]

Wayne Schiess (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 229 pages
• Publisher: Wm. S. Hein & Co. (September 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0837737036
• ISBN-13: 978-0837737034
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,528,103 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wayne Schiess teaches and writes about legal writing, with a particular focus on plain legal writing. Here's how he got there.

Wayne grew up in a small town in Idaho and attended a small high school that offered no AP courses. When he arrived at college, his roommate was surprised that Wayne was taking freshman English. "Didn't you take AP English?" the roommate asked. "What's AP?" Wayne replied.

Despite this lack of early training, Wayne eventually came to value clear writing through the influence of his mother, who, when Wayne was 17, returned to college to finish her English degree and to get a master's in English. She had always insisted that he speak correctly, and she had also imparted the message that good writing is plain, clear, and direct--not fancy, elevated, or pretentious. Yet her insistence on correct speaking and her unspoken messages about effective writing meant little to Wayne until he was 33 years old.

At 33, Wayne was four years into a job as a legal writing teacher at the University of Texas School of Law. He had arrived there after attending Cornell Law School and after three years at Baker Botts, a large Texas law firm. Now, what had started as an interest and as an escape from law practice was becoming Wayne's passion: he realized he loved legal writing, both doing and teaching, and he wanted to make it his lifelong professional career.

And so in an academic career of 20 years, Wayne has devoted himself in a nerdy, mildly obsessed, and always passionate way to legal writing and nothing but.

He teaches analytical legal writing, persuasive legal writing, legal drafting, and plain English. He is a frequent seminar speaker and has published dozens of articles on practical legal-writing skills, plus four books. His blog at Legalwriting.net has been named one of the ABA Journal Blawg 100, and he writes a monthly column on legal writing for Austin Lawyer magazine. In 2010, his work on the Texas Pattern Jury Charges was recognized by the Center for Plain Language. Since 1992, he has been on the law faculty at Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What I use to teach advanced lawyers, January 16, 2006

By 

Randall Christison (San Diego) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Better Legal Writing: 15 Topics for Advanced Legal Writers (Hardcover)

. Prof. Schiess has written a fine book, one systematically treating the writing problems facing a lawyer. I found the most useful chapter one entitled "Better legal analysis." So far as I have found, his is the only useful treatment of this fundamental lawyer's skill. Also highly useful are his chapters, "Better persuasion," "Better legal drafting," and "Ethical legal writing."
. More than worth the money. If you are a lawyer who writes, which I think is every lawyer who breathes, use this book. A tremendous amount of knowledge put into a 224-page book.
. Maybe if law schools took Prof Schiess's advice and treated law school writing as a serious discipline, we wouldn't need this book or Bryan Garner's or the many other books urging lawyers to write better. But until then, buy this book.