Five Practical Rules for Clear Legal Writing

Want to give yourself a competitive advantage in law? Pay more attention to the quality of your writing. Studies show that readers – including legal readers –strongly prefer clear, efficient, and accurate prose. They will find it easier and faster to read, understand, and more likely to start and finish reading what you have written. Understanding that your goal is comprehension - not perfection - removes a lot of the barriers to building your skill as a writer. In this convenient 90 minutes webinar, lawyer and writing instructor, Ryan Standil, offers you a new focus for improving what is a significant component of your daily work. Ryan will examine five writing issues that create misunderstandings between writers and readers and offer an easy to follow checklist for achieving a clearer, more understandable style.

In this practical webinar, you will learn how to write in a reader-friendly style. You will learn five rules that are used for drafting clear legal e-mails and documents. You will also complete an exercise to demonstrate how easy it is to incorporate the five rules into your everyday drafting.

 Upon course completion, you will be able to: 

• Put yourself in the shoes of your readers
• Define complex legal concepts using simple language
• Demonstrate your expertise in your practice area through legal writing
• Decide when to repeat a term and when to use a synonym
• Decide when to use (and when not to use) the word “and”
• Draft e-mails and documents that are easy to read – even for non-lawyers

1) Introduction 

• Comparing good writing to great writing 
• Bridging the lawyer-client communication gap 
• The science behind technical writing 

2) Five writing issues and how to fix them 

• Sentences with multiple interpretations 
• Synonymous legal terms 
• Misplaced modifiers and ambiguous pronouns 
• Jargon – when to use it and when to avoid it 
• The most confusing word in the dictionary (we write this word many times a day!) 

3) Program wrap-up and evaluation

You’ll learn how to produce writing that sufficiently makes your point, in less time, and you’ll enjoy writing more. With the use of Ryan’s five rules of thumb, many other hallmarks of good writing will follow naturally. Every day you get dozens of opportunities to build and improve your relationships with readers – through memos, letters, emails, court documents, and more. With a little extra care and a few insider tips, you can leverage these opportunities to become a more considerate writer and a better lawyer. Don’t miss this chance to refocus your writing with five simple rules you can use for the rest of your career.

This program will benefit all lawyers who want to strengthen their legal writing, and build better relationships with readers.

Ryan Standil is the president of Write To Excite, which is an organization that offers seminars on legal writing and business writing. Prior to becoming a writing instructor, Ryan worked at a corporate law firm and as a proposal writer at an investment bank. He attended Western University, in Ontario, Canada, where he graduated from the HBA program at Ivey Business School and the JD program at the Faculty of Law.