The Elements of Legal Style [Hardcover]

Bryan A. Garner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 21, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0195141628 | ISBN-13: 978-0195141627 | Edition: 2

With expanded coverage in this new edition, The Elements of Legal Style features additional sections, many more examples, and a thoroughly researched appendix that contains 80 major statements on prose style--what it is and how to attain it. Inspired by Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, this book clearly (often wittily) explains the full range of what legal writers need to know: mechanics, word choice, structure, and rhetoric, as well as all the special conventions that legal writers should follow in using headings, defined terms, quotations, and many other devices. Garner also provides abundant examples from the best legal writers of yesterday and today, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Clarence Darrow, Frank Easterbrook, and Antonin Scalia.
If you want to make your writing clearer, more precise, more persuasive, and above all more stylish, The Elements of Legal Style offers the surest--and the most enjoyable--means to that end.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A decade after the key first edition, Garner, editor in chief of Black's Law Dictionary and other works on legal writing, provides expanded coverage of appropriate legal prose and common errors in legal language, with the goal of encouraging clarity in legal writing. Throughout, he emphasizes fundamental rules of usage and fundamental principles of legal writing that range from punctuation, word choice, and syntactic arrangement to various forms of repetition. Suggestions regarding word choice give a good indication of his approach: he guides writers to strike out and replace fancy words, challenge vague words, and eschew euphemisms. In the foreword, Charles Alan Wright accurately comments that for lawyers "words are the only things we have to work with." Indeed, this book speaks not only to lawyers but to other writers as well, urging them to use style to develop persuasion, description, or analysis. Highly recommended for academic and larger public libraries. Steven Puro, St. Louis Univ.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Publishers each year spew out writing books for law students by the dozen. Forget them. This is the best. We had not believed that this classic work could be substantially improved. The inimitable Mr. Garner has proven this belief wrong, and happily so."-ABA Appellate Practice Journal

"Garner has given to the legal profession [an] extraordinary book....Invaluable."--South Dakota Law Review

"Bryan Garner...is rapidly becoming--if he's not there already--America's foremost authority on language and the law."--Barrister

"An expanded and more relaxed edition of his 1991 sourcebook."--William Safire, New York Times Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (March 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195141628
• ISBN-13: 978-0195141627
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Law > One-L > Legal Writing
  • #14 in Books > Education & Reference > Law
  • #17 in Books > Law > Law Practice

More About the Author

Bryan Garner is the award-winning author or editor of more than 20 books. He is a prolific lecturer, having taught more than 2,500 writing workshops since the 1991 founding of his company, LawProse, Inc. His works include Garner on Language and Writing and Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, co-written with Justice Antonin Scalia. Garner has served as editor-in-chief of Black's Law Dictionary since 1995, and he is the author of the grammar-and-usage chapter in the venerable Chicago Manual of Style.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best single investment in legal writing., May 18, 2000

By 

David Chaumette - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Elements of Legal Style (Hardcover)

I bought this book in 1994 or so, and try to read it every year as a refresher course. You can read the entire book (skimming the examples) in a long weekend. Doing that will immessurably improve the coherence and power of your writing. This book has helped me. The examples are clear and relevant and relatively easy to use in your own writing.

Garner has a real gift and this early book was just the first sign of his abilities. Enjoy!

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A more scholarly look at legal-writing style., July 3, 2002

By 

Wayne Schiess (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Elements of Legal Style (Hardcover)

This review is of the Second Edition, published in 2002.

This book takes an intelligent, thoughtful, and somewhat scholarly approach to legal-writing style, yet it is still readable and practical. Garner presents good writing advice, with examples of how to do it taken from the great legal writers: Holmes, Cardozo, Llewellyn, and others.

And the coverage is broad: from punctuation to citation; from commonly-misused words to rhetorical devices for persuasion. The book covers enough basics to reward the novice, but it can take the experienced writer farther than other legal-writing books.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well-designed and highly useful guidebook, September 6, 2003

By 

Michael V. Pelletier (Merrimack, NH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Elements of Legal Style (Hardcover)

My first Garner book was "The Winning Brief," purchased as I was preparing for an ultimately successful fight against a speeding ticket, and I was instantly taken by his clear and informative style.

This book continues that trend. Garner is an exceptional writer, and even the best of writers, legal or otherwise, can learn a great deal from this book.