A Practical Guide to Legal Writing & Legal Method

Rating:
Summary: A lawyer's biggest errors
Review: Every lawyer knows better than to simply say what they think, give an opinion, or offer unfounded advice. "Don't tell me what you THINK, tell me the LAW!" This book makes that error on a regular basis. You'll get lots of information on how to write and present arguments, but none of it is actually founded on anything. Indeed, much of it flies in the face of what psychology has told us of the effects of primacy and recency. Another lawyer's error that simply underscores how baseless this book is? No citations.

Rating:
Summary: A strong introductory textbook.
Review: I have used this book as a text in the legal-writing course I teach. It is one of the most widely used and respected legal-writing texts available. Its strengths are that it is clear, easy-to-read, and practical. It lays out the basics of legal analysis, plus it explains how to write a traditional, objective legal memo and a persuasive legal brief. It always gets to the point quickly, and it covers all the important topics a law student will need in a first-year course on legal writing.

One minor weakness is that some of the sample documents in the appendix do not follow the principles explained in the text.

As for the complaint from "A reader from Honolulu" that the book does not cite authority, that's an odd concern. Very few, if any, legal-writing texts cite authority. What would they cite to? Other legal-writing texts (their competition)? What you are buying when you buy a legal-writing text is the expertise of the authors, not a compilation of research on legal writing. I know that these authors are experts, and the advice in this text is practical and effective.