Lawyers: murder your darlings

The crime: bad legal writing

Earlier this year, The Economist published an article entitled “Why legal writing is so awful.” The author, commenting on a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, asks why “most legal language is fussy, tangled, and incapable of producing anything … pithy” and considers several hypotheses. Perhaps they are trying to convince others of their expertise. Or to be as exact as possible. Or to avoid the hard work of reinventing the wheel in an industry that has been plagued by bad writing for what seems like time immemorial.

While each of these theories has merit, I submit that the root cause of bad legal writing—the endless jargon, the run-on sentences, the verbosity wordiness—is the lawyer’s ego, i.e., the desire to sound smart. Lawyers, like most of us, are self-interested and want to succeed. They understand that status, authority, and reputation can determine their success. Lawyers who are perceived as smart will engender the trust of their clients and the respect of their colleagues. They are more likely to persuade judges in their favour and to make a strong impression on their readers.

Paradoxically, the way many legal writers go about achieving these ends is fundamentally wrongheaded. The reader is unlikely to absorb a legal argument when they are busy wading through “heretofores” and “hereinafters,” or forced to Google antiquated legal terms of art. Instead, the reader will get bored and irritated, disengage from the text, and start thinking about tv and snacks (just me?).  

The verdict: murder your darlings

Happily, this outcome is far from inevitable. In order to reach readers and hold their attention, lawyers should heed the advice of the late British author, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. In a 1914 lecture published in On the Art of Writing, he issued the following edict:

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

This gentle advice is routinely doled out to aspiring fiction writers. But legal writers may benefit from it as well, especially at the review stage. When editing your work, do not be afraid to cut something out if it does not need to be in there. And if you find yourself particularly attached to a specific phrase or sentence—if you are thrilled that you finally get to trot out that Latin term you picked up in law school, or delighted by a clever turn of phrase you managed to include—these could be signs that your ego is at play.

Legal writers should constantly be interrogating their work, asking themselves: “What function does this word/sentence/paragraph/chapter serve?” “Does it clarify a point I am making?” “Does it move my argument forward?” “If I were to remove this word/sentence/paragraph/chapter, how would that impact the final product (if at all)?”

You might conclude, if you answer honestly, that what you’ve written is illogical. Or redundant. Or confusing. That it does not, ultimately, make you sound smart. And in such cases, your best option may be to grab your proverbial shotgun, take a deep breath, and murder your darlings.