Customer Reviews

The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well

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Even though this book is 17 years old, it remains in the first rank. More extensive than Steven Stark's, more engaging than Garner's, Goldstein and Lieberman's book is my first choice for any lawyer seeking to become a competent writer. Part III, the longest part of the book is entitled, "Making Your Prose Serviceable," the part one must read. But particularly worthy is the Part following, "Making Your Prose Memorable." Even though few of us will ever attain that goal, it's worth trying. I can't think of another book in the genre suggesting such a lofty purpose. I appreciate having some guidance.

How good is this book? Well, I've put it on my shelf right between Bryan Garner's masterwork The Winning Brief and Steven Stark's famous and succinct Writing To Win. Like both of those books, Professors Goldstein and Liberman present a systemic approach to legal writing. They are brave enough to offer real-life legal writing duds as well as writing gems from practicing lawyers as well as judges. Only professors could do that. If a lawyer tried it, it would be professional harikari.

Their advice is more general than Garner's and more detailed than Stark's. In that vein, the book is a good middle-of-the-road guide for lawyers. Frankly, I was skeptical of a book written for lawyers by two professors. I thought they'd be throwing stones from their ivory towers at the litigators in the trenches. They do, but not so much we can't handle it. More importantly, their advice is mostly on the mark.

That doesn't mean they don't stray a bit from time to time. They spend the first agonizing 34 pages telling us over and over again how legal writing has been atrocious for centuries apparently never to change. So why should we bother with this book? And at one point they proclaim that lawyers too often are careless about punctuation. Poppycock, I say. In my experience, many lawyers obsess over typos and punctuation and completely forget to breathe any life into their arguments.

But those are minor flaws in a very good writing guide. If you know a lawyer, chances are this would make a great gift. Too bad I already have it...

Are lawyers professional writers? Could a law office benefit by adopting some methods of a book publisher or newspaper office?

Yes and yes, according to the authors of this excellent book.

The writing advice is superb, from commas to sentence length and from transitions to editing methods. But the best parts of the book are the suggestions for managing a law office so that it will produce consistent, top-notch written work. The authors recommend using proofreaders, training junior lawyers in editing, and employing someone in the position of copy editor. All great advice that would improve legal writing.

Length:: 2:51 Mins

A great book on good writing for lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Everybody should read this readable book, not just lawyers. You'll especially love the authors' ideal vision of a world that's jargon-free.

EVEN IF YOU'RE A LAWYER

An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers

When Shakespeare penned his `kill all the lawyers' line - forget which play... don't ask - he might have had it in mind that even in his day, the often bombastic outpourings of the then legal leading lights were a bit long on pomposity and a little short on clarity.

It would seem that in the intervening centuries, not a lot has changed - hence the need for this terrific book aptly titled `The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well' by Goldstein and Lieberman.

This is one guide to writing well that's written well - very well. It's immensely readable, laugh-out-loud amusing, yet deadly serious. It is not a new publication, having been around on the shelves of university bookshops worldwide for a while, but the advice it provides is timeless. In our opinion it should be in the library of -- or preferably at the right hand of -- every lawyer in the English speaking world.

Lawyers who are at least dimly aware of the need for clear, concise communication should, if there's any justice, end up with a lot more grateful clients as a result of having read and noted the contents of this book. As the Washington Post commented, `lawyers...need writers, or at least a guide like `The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well' to help them put together a sentence that the rest of the world can understand.'

`The book's authors provide straight-to-the-heart advice for lawyers who want to face the music and turn over a new leaf in their writing...a book deemed worth having,' intones the Harvard Law Review.

`Deemed?' Uh oh! We have just perused the useful and trenchant Usage Notes section at the back of the book and have come across the word `deem' and the authors' low opinion of it. `Many lawyers love this word, for no apparent reason,' they say rather unkindly. In their view, no way should you say that something is `deemed' inappropriate. Say instead that something is inappropriate -- like over reliance on clichés, for example.

Goldstein & Lieberman may sound a little punctilious at times and quick to mock and scorn, but they do it gracefully. And how refreshing it is to read a readable book on English usage which blasts the incessant and almost compulsive use of jargon, not just in the law, but in management-speak, techno-speak, psychobabble and just about everywhere else, including the media where folk should know better. The book's overwhelming endorsement of plain, precise English is encouraging and certainly positive.

`Does bad writing really matter?' challenge the authors, arguing convincingly that it does. It matters terribly if meanings are distorted or obscured, judges and juries puzzled and clients confused.

We once saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car at university which read: `Eschew obfuscation'. Think about it - and if you don't get it, you are a lost cause, so don't bother reading this book, then.

If you do get it, you need this book to tell you how to do it. Or if you do know how to do it, you'll find `The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well' a useful guide to good English usage for your more verbose and obscurantist colleagues.

This is an excellent work for lawyers wishing to improve the clarity, continuity, and power of their prose. It is easy to understand, and full of examples. This work illustrates what a judge-professor once taught me: "There is no such thing as good legal writing. There is only good writing."

i first purchased this "intriguing" book when living in chicago where i worked as "foreign patent specialist" and "senior tech writer/editor". When we moved to Las Vegas, after my retirement, I panicked when I realized that I've lost this book. Just open any page and savor the words in this book. Bravo to the authors. I wish I could shake their hands for a well-written and intriguing book.

Goldstein and Lieberman have authored a book every law professional and law student should consult. The glossary alone has enough helpful hints to improve one's writing.