Hereof, Thereof, and Everywhereof: A Contrarian Guide to Legal Drafting

Rating:
Summary: Quirky, but with a lot of helpful advice.
Review: I like this book. That said, it has some odd things about it.

I like: its support of clear and direct legal drafting, and its advice to abandon the archaic, formalistic garbage that clogs so much legal drafting.
I like: the section on document design and format, which is contemporary and sensible; the author explains in detail why a lot of legal-document formatting still looks so stodgy: the lingering effects of the typewriter.
I like: the practical advice from an experienced drafter on a variety of drafting subjects: headings, numbering, boilerplate, definitions, counterpart documents, and schedules/exhibits.

But there were some unexpected and odd sections, too: (1) a fairly long discussion of using footnotes for citations; this seems out of place in a book about transactional drafting; (2) a short chapter on explaining with examples, which contains an odd section on how to pick the fictional names for the example characters you are using; and (3) eight pages on guaranties--not on how to draft them, but on the substantive law of guaranty and suretyship; it again seemed out of place in a book about writing.

But the book is modern and has a lot of practical advice. I recommend it.