SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING FOR AMERICAN LEGAL

AUDIENCES
Vern R. Walker, 2013

Assume you are writing for an attorney, judge or law professor who is busy, which requires
organizing and presenting the information in an efficient and effective way. It also means
showing your reader that you value their time more than you do your own - i.e., by
omitting all irrelevant material, and helpfully organizing the relevant material.

The Introduction's first paragraph should generate the motivation to take the time to read
further. The Introduction as a whole should contain a summary of the paper, including the
problem being addressed, the conclusion or solution to the problem, and the key reasoninp'
leading to the conclusion. The reader needs a roadmap of the big picture from the outset. ~

Assume that the members of your audience are solvers of legal problems. The entire paper
shõuld be focused on one or more legal problem(s), and their solution(s). As a result, you
should:
Start by stating the legal problems at the outset, and keep the discussion
oriented toward those problems throughout the rest of the paper:Make the
problem(s) precise, and as concrete as possible. The problem answers this I
question in the reader's mind: "Why do I want to read this paper?"
Continue to ask the question for each sentence of the paper, so that the
reader always knows the answer to this question: "Why do I need to read this }
next sentence, and invest the time needed to understand what it means?"
Be efficient, and don't waste the reader's time. Don't tell the reader anything
she doesn't need to know to solve the proble~ at hand.
Be effective, and provide new information only after you have laid t e
~oundation for it, by re ating the information to the problem being discussed.
Don't tell the reader anything that she needs to know until the point in the I
discussion when she needs to know it. At that point, she should also know
why she needs to know it.
Provi de concrete examples of any abstract or technical concepts as soon as
youintroduce them, unless the examples are clearly not needed.
Text should contain only the essential information needed to address the
problem, and all incidental information should be in footnotes (not endnotes
that the reader has to find).
Even footnotes do not contain irrelevant information, but !.he~ontai~
possibly relevant information that the reader does not need to read unless
she wants more background to the texto