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“Being a member of the Court is a little like walking through fresh concrete,” said Justice O’Connor. “We look back and see our footprints in those opinions that we’ve written and they tend to harden after us.” From a legal-writing perspective, how might you follow in her footsteps? Revered for her
Did you hear about the federal judge who called out the “potshots and hyperbole” in a motion and asked counsel to refile? BriefCatch and I spent about an hour trying to help. Here’s the result if you simply cut hyperbole, repetition, and over-quoting while streamlining the rest. View on FlippingBook.com.
“Delighted to see the Supreme Court is interested in beer drinkers,” wrote Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then the 42-year-old head of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and a professor at Columbia Law. Her correspondent: Fred Gilbert, counsel for Oklahoma college student Curtis Craig. Craig had challenged an Oklahoma statute allowing 18-year-old
Who are the best writers in Supreme Court history? Poll a hundred lawyers, and just about all of them will put the late Justice Antonin Scalia in their top five. Some may quibble with his judicial philosophy, but no one can question Justice Scalia’s writing chops. To see why, we
I often tell lawyers to purge their writing of Latinisms: why say “inter alia” when “among other things” would do, or “assuming arguendo” when you mean “even if”? But there are exceptions to every rule, as Judge Patricia Millett of the D.C. Circuit shows us with her dubitante opinion in
What’s the difference between a “little used car” and a “little-used car”? Between “more critical attacks” and “more-critical attacks”? Or, for that matter, between “toxic tort litigation” and “toxic-tort litigation”? Friends don’t let friends worry about what modifies what. That’s why grammarians invented rules for multiword phrases known as “compound
Curious what top brief-writers do differently from the rest of us? This AI-powered study shares concrete, practical solutions. View on FlippingBook.com.
An easy way to make your brief-writing more appealing? Shun deadweight openers—however, additionally, consequently, accordingly. That technique has worked wonders for the Chief Justice, who Justice Ginsburg once said was the greatest appellate advocate of his generation. Back in his brief-writing days, he showed how a lighter touch—thus, so, but,
Democratic stalwarts Seth Waxman and Lloyd Cutler, along with 156 prominent lawyers, signed a letter attesting to John Roberts’s reputation as a “brilliant writer.” Thanks to Roberts’s recent confirmation, many people now know about the letter. But what is it that makes Roberts’s writing so brilliant? Let’s explore that question
Writing is vital to every part of your legal career. BriefCatch empowers you to stand out above the rest.