Archive for April 2020
Writing About Regulations? Remember “You and Yours”
So many people yearn to understand regulations right now. If you want to help, think of yourself as an interpreter. Less “copy and paste” and more “streamline and clarify.” Here’s an underused tip: Make it all about “You.” Let’s take the IRS’s attempt to explain a complex scheme involving inherited individual retirement accounts, or IRAs.…
Read MoreConcerned About Finding Meaningful Projects for Summer Associates? One Solution and a Dozen Benefits.
Many Legal Writing Pro clients and BigLaw friends are scrambling right now to transform their summer associate programs on the fly. At the top of the list: How will my firm find substantive work for our summer associates in the face of a truncated season, remote participation, dwindling transactions, stalled litigation, and distracted supervisors and…
Read MoreWriting to Clients and the Public in the COVID-19 Era: Some Clarity Tips
So many are clamoring for guidance from lawyers right now. And so many lawyers are clamoring to be trusted advisors. Time pressure, high stakes, and ever-evolving rules make clear writing invaluable these days. But are we doing all we can? Let’s apply some clarity tips to a typical BigLaw client alert I found randomly. The…
Read MoreForce Majeure and Coronavirus: A Checklist
I skimmed hundreds of pages of client alerts and other publications. Here’s a distillation. What is force majeure? A contract defense allowing you to (1) delay performance, (2) excuse performance, or (3) limit liability from nonperformance. You invoke force majeure over an event (or the effect of an event) that you couldn’t control or reasonably anticipate…
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