Short & Sweet

[legalmoose]

Had to recommend changes in language for some legislation we're proposing, and basically I shortened it, cut out a lot of excess verbiage, and made it more flexible in our favor. The person whose language I was changing, of course, is an older attorney in the office and I always get apprehensive about changing older attorneys' language because almost inevitably they were trained (either explicitly or through example) to be as "wordy" as possible in their legal writing. The teachers in legal writing, at least when I went through, were all about short & sweet - get the point across as succinctly as possible, a sentiment with which I agree wholeheartedly. Contrary to popular opinion, we're not all windbags.

Thankfully he took it well, and was quite happy that it was shorter and more flexible. *phew*

Comments

[scott8424.livejournal.com]

Most of our attorneys seem to be of the "wordy" variety. =)

[spiritquest.livejournal.com]

Three cheers for laws that are not unnecessarily complex!

Hip-Hip! Hooray!!!
Hip-Hip! Hooray!!!
Hip-Hip! Hooray!!!