Senior Judge Shares Tip To Avoid “Lousy Brief Writing.”

22 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Abbreviations, Acronyms, Appellate Law, Bad Legal Writing, Brief Writing, District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, Initialisms, Legal Writing, Readability, Style Manuals

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Acronymns, Brief Writing, Bryan Garner, Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage, Initialisms, Legal Writing, Louisiana Appeals Blog, Raymond Ward, Senior Judge Laurence Silberman

Don’t Let Your Brief Be DOA, by Raymond Ward, Louisiana Civil Appeals Blog

http://tinyurl.com/k8urt5j

Here is a briefwriting tip courtesy of Senior Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit: avoid overuse of uncommon initialisms.

Petitioner’s brief, unfortunately, was laden with obscure acronyms notwithstanding the admonitions in our handbook (and on our website) to avoid uncommon acronyms. Since the brief was signed by a faculty member at Columbia Law School, that was rather dismaying both because of ignorance of our standards and because the practice constitutes lousy brief writing. [Ouch!] . . . .