Legal Writing

Rombauer Dick Majorie and Squires B. Lynn. "Legal Writing In A Nutshell." American Bar Association Journal. JSTOR. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.

Lynn B. Squires was a legal writing associate at the University of Washington School of Law and Marjorie Dick Rombauer was a professor of law at Washington. Together this scholar and teacher of law wrote a book outlining the most essential and effective qualities that a law student should possess to become successful in their particular field of legal expertise in respect to their writing proficiency.

At the start of this book Romabauer and Squire recognizes that lawyers use different approaches to writing depending on their purpose of the document being written. Law office memorandums differ from petitions and power of attorney documents differ from motions.  Despite the document genre the authors contend to show its audience applicable techniques that may be applied to any document style. Although the target audience of this book is law students anyone who seeks to improve their writing skills may find this piece of literature helpful (as I did).  One particular section in this book focuses on the art of writing clear and cohesive sentences.  " The principles of sentence constructions are few and simple. First, begin a sentence with its subject, if you can. Second, place the object close to the verb" (Rombauer and Squires 22). These are specific techniques that the authors give  to ensure that the writer is writing effectively. Rombauer and Squire further in the chapter then shows the difference between legal and non-legal writing. "The reader expects the subject to come first. If it does not, then the reader must remember all words the words that precede the subject until the subject appears" (36). Another chapter describes how to make one's prose more precise. The writer is advised to use words in their literal sense to dispense with such "archaic legalisms" as "herein" "aforesaid" as opposed to using common terms such as "because", "rather" than "prior to".   The book also contains helpful information on the organization of legal writing. It describes the way a large scale writing should be organized including briefs and memorandas'and then states principles of shorter units of organization that can be applied to the analysis of particular questions and issues within the larger projects. This book also covers the organization of paragraphs and transitional paragraphs.

This book successfully teaches principles and techniques that lawyers can use in their various writing tasks. Although this book intended audience is to writers a lot of the information found within can be used universally with any person that has problems when it comes to technical writing (writing with a purpose). I found this book extremely helpful as it may be applicable to my current area of study (English) and my future field of study (law).