Modern Legal Drafting : A Guide to Using Clearer Language (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)

Rating:
Summary: A British book that U.S. lawyers can use.
Review: The book is for lawyers in Great Britain and Commonwealth nations like Australia and New Zealand. So the examples may strike U.S. lawyers as odd or old. But the principles are still valid, and the advice is still practical. The book explains how to draft in a clear, modern style. It provides before-and-after texts, examples of litigation-causing terms, and authoritative discussions of grammar, punctuation, and tone for the legal drafter.

It also has two things I haven't seen in other drafting books: (1) an informative discussion of the historical causes of bad legal drafting, and (2) a history of the plain English movement in England, Commonwealth nations, and the U.S.