Legal Writing Rules
How Law students should write
Do you need to improve your writing style? Legal writing is a tough style to learn, and students often do not become proficient in it until the end of their law course or last year of study. However, there are a few things you may do to accelerate the learning process. Consider the three simple rules below to assist you in improving your legal writing skills.
Rule 1
Keep your sentences short
Many of the law students I have taught over the years have had to be told to use shorter sentences. Students go to trait is to use long words. They use the types of words that would normally not be used in a conversation. This is a mistake. Over utilizing extensive terms that students are unable to completely grasp leads to an essay sounding strange and verbose.
Effective legal writing, on the other hand, is all about making the information understandable and easy to read. Using short sentences is the way lawyers should write. Long sentences of more than three lines usually never succeed in achieving this purpose. Do not take my word for it look at how Lord Denning used to write. To show you what I mean, look at the judgment of Miller v Jackson [1977] 3 W.L.R. 20.
We can see from the judgement that Lord Denning is a fan of cricket. It is a sport he admires and we can see this in his writing. Look at the way his words paint a picture of men playing cricket. You can see it.
As seen in Lord Denning's open opening remarks, he uses very short sentences. It is not always practicable to keep all sentences to a minimum length. That is absolutely OK. You should make every effort to avoid writing long sentences. If the bulk of your essay's sentences is short and brief, your reader will be able to follow the longer ones. Wherever possible, keep your sentences short. Any sentences that are longer than three lines should be broken down. Consider how Lord Denning proceeded.
Rule 2
Do not use words you do not understand
One significant error that some law students make (and which deteriorates their legal writing) is to use complex words that they do not fully understand. This sometimes occurs when students have read a journal article that they did not fully grasp and are attempting to include portions of it into their essay via paraphrase. Consider this example from a student’s work:
You can see that the student is using too many words. Just say it’s a relationship of trust and confidence. Also note how long the second sentence is – too long. If you have ever made that error, you should know that it will almost certainly not help you get a decent mark on your law assignment – just the contrary. You may believe that your article is of exceptional quality, but your professor will quickly pick up on it, as I have.
Rule 3
Use academic sentence structures
Although few students are aware of it, the majority of legal journals are written in what is referred to as the legal academic writing style. This is also the way in which you should strive to write your legal essays. While there is no one formal guide to legal writing style, it may be picked up by reading multiple journal papers and spotting certain repeated phrase forms that appear in them.
Once you have identified such structures, you should adhere to them and make an attempt to include them into your legal writings. This will assist you in writing brief and straightforward documents that do not seem uncomfortable. The following are some excellent examples of the sorts of sentence constructions that are characteristic of legal academic writing:
1. The purpose of this essay is to…
2. As explained earlier in this essay,...
3. In the case of Jackson v Miller the court decided...