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The Researching Paralegal

Tag Archives: Findlaw

What Will Ignoring the Court Rules Get You? A Big Fat Benchslap.

08 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Bad Legal Writing, Benchslap, Brief Writing, Editing, Footnotes, Judges, Legal Writing, Motions, Plain Language, Proofreading, Readability

≈ Comments Off on What Will Ignoring the Court Rules Get You? A Big Fat Benchslap.

Tags

Court Rules, Editing, Findlaw, George Khoury, Legal Writing, William P. Statsky

Florida Judge Tosses Improperly Spaced Court Filing, by George Khoury, Esq., Strategist, The Findlaw Law Firm Business Blog  (with hat tip to William P. Statsky)

http://bit.ly/2uP9FyB

Mr. Khoury says that “[h]ell hath no fury like a Florida judge who receives an improperly formatted brief.” You better believe it. Why on earth would you ignore the format requirements in your court’s local rules? Folks, this just isn’t that hard.

The author of this motion for summary judgment thought the court would either ignore or not notice that the motion and supporting brief were spaced 1-1/2 lines rather than double-spaced. And who’s going to notice longer-than-usual footnotes? Really? Any judge or clerk whose job it is to read, read, and then read some more every dad-gum day.

Seriously, do you want to plow through heavy footnotes? Hands? Didn’t think so. Neither does your judge. Why risk alienating the person you are trying to convince? The stakes are too high to cling to a style of writing that sets you up to lose before anyone reads your motion or brief.

There are other, and much more effective ways, to trim a motion and brief. Editing is the key.

  1. Eliminate any unnecessary word.
  2. Remember that subject and verbs go together.
  3. Use short sentences.
  4. Delete all legalese. Yes, all of it. No excuses.
  5. You can always delete “in order.” Try it – it will not change the meaning in your sentence. These are an example of filler words that just take up space.
  6. Stop using phrases such as “brief of the plaintiff.” Write “plaintiff’s brief” instead.
  7. Never, never, never use long block quotations.
  8. Quote from a court opinion only when the court says it better than you can.

A quick search of this blog will give you tons of editing tips. I promise that you can get your point across with fewer words. It is not the number of words you use that count; it is what words you choose and how you say it. -CCE

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We Should Know Better.

07 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Confidentiality, Legal Ethics, Rules of Professional Responsibility

≈ Comments Off on We Should Know Better.

Tags

California Bar Association, Casey Sullivan, Confidentiality, Findlaw, Legal Ethics

Don’t Reveal Embarrassing Client Info, Cal. Bar Warns, by Casey C. Sullivan, Esq., FindLaw (with hat tip to William P. Statsky)

http://bit.ly/2aFqJOQ

I hope that everyone learned in paralegal or law school that you don’t talk in elevators, restaurants, and any other public place about clients and other embarrassing facts you may pick up along the way.  I once worked in a building with a popular restaurant on the top floor. We were close enough to the courthouse that lawyers often went there for lunch. It was amazing how many settlement discussions I heard in the elevator. It wasn’t hard to guess which case it was either.

We all have great war stories. Funny things that happened in court or depositions – things like that. Yes, truth is often funnier than fiction. Maybe thinking of it from the client’s perspective is helpful. If you were the client, would you want your attorney making your case the butt of a joke or story told in public? – CCE

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New Jersey Lawyers Use Paralegal to Spy on Facebook and Cross the Ethical Line.

30 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Attorney Discipline, Legal Ethics, Social Media, Supervising Support Staff

≈ Comments Off on New Jersey Lawyers Use Paralegal to Spy on Facebook and Cross the Ethical Line.

Tags

Facebook, Findlaw, Jonathan R. Tung, Legal Ethics, Paralegal Ethics, William P. Statsky

NJ Lawyers Get Sanctioned for Facebook Spying, by Jonathan R. Tung, Esq., Strategist, The FindLaw Law Firm Business Blog (with hat tip to William P. Statsky)

http://bit.ly/1X0X44k

When news came out that two New Jersey defense attorneys had spied on a plaintiff through Facebook, there was obvious buzz within the legal community over bright-line rules and attorney ethics. Just what qualifies as an ‘unauthorized’ communication? Lawyers should always take steps to tread carefully in these ‘novel ethical issues.’ First impression or not, you don’t want to end up being the poster child.

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No Question About It – Bad Legal Writing Squanders Your Money.

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Bad Legal Writing, Economics, Law Office Management, Legal Writing, Legalese, Management, Plain Language, Readability, Time Management

≈ Comments Off on No Question About It – Bad Legal Writing Squanders Your Money.

Tags

Bad Legal Writing, Findlaw, Law Firm Economics, Matthew Salzwedel, Plain English, The Lawyerist Blog

Face It — Bad Legal Writing Wastes Money, by Matthew Salzwedel, The Lawyerist Blog

https://lawyerist.com/60599/face-it-bad-legal-writing-wastes-money/

A recent article on FindLaw.com called Five Ways Attorneys Waste Money claimed that attorneys can cut clients’ costs by avoiding needless motions, staffing cases leanly, focusing on the important issues, avoiding petty spats with the opposition, and being smart about when to settle.

But the article ignored the most important way attorneys can save money for their firms and clients: by learning how to write in plain English.

Most attorneys don’t believe that writing style matters. They might concede that writing in plain English can be aesthetically pleasing to the reader; but they also say that it’s not worth the time to learn how to do it because there’s no evidence that writing in plain English saves time or money.

But these attorneys ignore what legal-writing experts have taught — and what the empirical evidence has shown — for more than 50 years: that plain English saves time and money by increasing the ability of readers to understand and retain what they have read. . . .

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