Lifting The Fog Of Legalese

"Professor Joseph Kimble, a leading expert on plain language, has collected in this one book many of his published essays. They will interest and inform judges, lawyers, law students, legal scholars, and anyone else who engages in legal writing."--BOOK JACKET.

As lawyers, we must not, in hot pursuit of common law, outrun common sense. The dread of that eventuality prompted this book. Uncommon Law of Learned Writing 2.0 promotes common sense in legal language. Plain language, which is commonsensical, broadens access to legal documents, thus democratizing the law. If democracy is government of the people, by the people, and for the people, law is the language in which government interacts with the people—it’s the language of democracy. The people whose government speaks through law must understand what is said. No democratic society should brook legalese—a dense, verbose dialect known only to lawyers. What then should society do to redress the lawyer-induced obscurity? A Shakespearean character had an alarming proposal: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Apparently, that proposal was not enthusiastically endorsed, which explains why we’re still here. A milder remedy—enrolling lawyers in language classes—has been mooted, which explains why this book is in your hands. Uncommon Law of Learned Writing 2.0 motivates lawyers to prefer plain language to the legalese and verbosity that have besmirched legal writing for centuries. This book is as sweeping and authoritative a treatment of its subject as you can find anywhere.

Employment Discrimination Law is an innovative new skills-based text designed for flexible use. To add a skills component to lecture courses, it can be used in conjunction with traditional casebooks, and is also an ideal text for a free-standing practicum or seminar. Employment Discrimination Law functions as a "course in a box" providing readers with basic background law, including constitutional and statutory law governing the employment relationship; general drafting principles important to lawyers in any field as well as an overview of drafting issues specific to employment discrimination law; an introduction to the key research strategies and sources; an overview of the ethical issues likely to arise; and a solid preview of client counseling, negotiation strategy, and preventative lawyering. The text features a combination of text, sample documents, checklists, charts, and exercises. These well-crafted exercises, for students to complete individually or in groups, range from discrete questions to be researched and answered in a 5-minute small-group class session to much more detailed problems that could serve as final evaluative documents. Employment Discrimination Law is an innovative new skills-based text designed for flexible use. To add a skills component to lecture courses, it can be used in conjunction with traditional casebooks, and is also an ideal text for a free-standing practicum or seminar. Employment Discrimination Law functions as a "course in a box" providing readers with basic background law, including constitutional and statutory law governing the employment relationship; general drafting principles important to lawyers in any field as well as an overview of drafting issues specific to employment discrimination law; an introduction to the key research strategies and sources; an overview of the ethical issues likely to arise; and a solid preview of client counseling, negotiation strategy, and preventative lawyering. The text features a combination of text, sample documents, checklists, charts, and exercises. These well-crafted exercises, for students to complete individually or in groups, range from discrete questions to be researched and answered in a 5-minute small-group class session to much more detailed problems that could serve as final evaluative documents.

Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please seeks to change public and legal writing--by making the ultimate case for plain language. The book gathers a large body of evidence for two related truths: using plain language can save businesses and government agencies a ton of money, and plain language serves and satisfies readers in every possible way. It also debunks the ten biggest myths about plain writing and looks back on 50 highlights in plain-language history. The first edition was described by reviewers as "powerful," "compelling," "inspiring," and "astounding." This second edition has been updated and expanded throughout. Professor Joseph Kimble is a leading international expert on this subject. Here is the book that sums up his important work, with a message that is vital to every government writer, business writer, and attorney.

“This easy-to-follow guide is useful both as a general course of instruction and as a targeted aid in solving particular legal writing problems.” —Harvard Law Review Clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful—all too often, legal writing embodies none of these qualities. Its reputation for obscurity and needless legalese is widespread. For more than twenty years, Bryan A. Garner’s Legal Writing in Plain English has helped address this problem by providing lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The leading guide to clear writing in the field, this indispensable volume encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process that will appeal to other professionals: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. Accessible and witty, Legal Writing in Plain English draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through decades of teaching. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting, and the book’s principles are reinforced by sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section. In this new edition, Garner preserves the successful structure of the original while adjusting the content to make it even more classroom-friendly. He includes case examples from the past decade and addresses the widespread use of legal documents in electronic formats. His book remains the standard guide for producing the jargon-free language that clients demand and courts reward. “Those who are willing to approach the book systematically and to complete the exercises will see dramatic improvements in their writing.” —Law Library Journal

The leading guide to clear writing!--StartFragment --—and clear thinking!--StartFragment --—in the legal profession for more than two decades, now newly updated. Admirably clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful—all too often, legal writing embodies none of these qualities. Its reputation for obscurity and needless legalese is widespread. Since 2001, Bryan A. Garner’s Legal Writing in Plain English has helped address this problem by providing lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. Now the leading guide to clear writing in the field, this indispensable volume encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. Accessible and witty, Legal Writing in Plain English draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through decades of teaching experience. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting, and the book’s principles are reinforced by sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section. For this third edition, Garner has retained the structure of the previous versions, with updates and new material throughout. There are new sections on making your writing vivid and concrete and on using graphics to enhance your argument. The coverage and examples of key topics such as achieving parallelism, avoiding legalese, writing effective openers and summaries, and weaving quotations into your text have also been expanded. And the sample legal documents and exercises have been updated, while newly added checklists provide quick summaries of each section. Altogether, this new edition will be the most useful yet for legal professionals and students seeking to improve their prose.

This book provides a comprehensive guide to drafting legal documents in plain English with a dual practical and academic approach.

Since the 1987 appearance of A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, Bryan A. Garner has proved to be a versatile and prolific writer on legal-linguistic subjects. This collection of his essays shows both profound scholarship and sharp wit. The essays cover subjects as wide-ranging as learning to write, style, persuasion, contractual and legislative drafting, grammar, lexicography, writing in law school, writing in law practice, judicial writing, and all the literature relating to these diverse subjects.