Discipline Yourself In Writing: No Adverbs In Persuasive Writing
You’re not writing a novel or a short story. You’re writing a legal paper. Make it focused.
You’re not writing a novel or a short story. You’re writing a legal paper. Make it focused.
All writing, indeed, all communication has a purpose: to educate (a fifth-grade science book); to express gratitude (a thank-you email); to schedule a lunch (a calendar invite); to entertain or to teach a moral lesson (most short stories). The list obviously goes on and on.
Legal writing in litigation has a purpose, too: to win. In some fashion that is your goal in everything you file in court or submit to your adversary (the big litigation writing exception to this rule is client communication, which can have a range of purposes related to the attorney-client relationship—educating, assuaging concern, building trust, and a lot more).
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Winning means exactly that: achieving the clients’ goals (something you should have figured out well before you ever put the proverbial pencil to paper in any writing on behalf of the client). Winning doesn’t mean indulging in the frustrated novelist inside many lawyers, nor impressing your adversary (sometimes letting your adversary think you are unimpressive may actually help you win for the client), nor writing in prolix prose that sounds oh-so lawyerly and makes you feel like those seemingly billions in debt you incurred to go to law school are somehow paying off.
No, legal writing in litigation is about winning. This tiny piece cannot hope to touch on all the ways a litigator can be a better writer (and there are people out there whose livelihood is teaching that skill). I’ll focus on one simple rule my colleagues and I at our firm try to follow to discipline ourselves and help us win for our clients: No adverbs in persuasive writing.
No adverbs means exactly that. They add nothing, they waste time, and excising them often helps your writing become more focused overall.
Thus, don’t write:
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“Plaintiff incredibly asserts that this email exchange somehow created an enforceable agreement. This simply is wrong. Defendant obviously never paid consideration.”
Instead:
“Plaintiff asserts this email exchange created an enforceable agreement. This is wrong. Defendant never paid any consideration.”
Or best:
“This email exchange did not create an enforceable agreement because David never paid consideration.”
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The second is tighter because of the lack of adverbs, and the reader doesn’t feel as lectured to. And cutting out the adverbs in the move from the first to the second makes it easier to move to the third, which is the tightest, most to the point assertion (and which has only 14 words contrasted with the 21 in the first example).
(As an aside, note that I also take out use of “Plaintiff” and “Defendant” and instead used a name here for my made-up defendant. I often cannot keep track of who is whom in papers I edit written on behalf of our clients. This is not the fault of the primary writer but my own limitation as a distracted, busy reader. But while you might expect your judge or arbitrator or clerk to hopefully be smarter than I am, they likely will be at least as busy and distracted, and able to spend even less time on the paper I edit than I do.)
As with so much of the work of a trial lawyer, in writing you will do a better a job remembering what your job is: to win for the client. And really winning in writing, obviously, does not mean completely taking forever to get to the point.
Winning in writing means being focused.
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John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at [email protected].
