Legal Writing--Getting It Right and Getting It Written

Ray, Mary Barnard, and Ramsfield, Jill J.

ISBN 10: 0314324941 / ISBN 13: 9780314324948

Published by West Publishing Company, St. Paul, MN, 1987

About this Item

xxxviii, 250 p. Several blank end pages at front, but title page is present. This is one of the American Casebook Series. This book is a desktop reference for legal writers. As a handbook, it answers the small technical questions peculiar to legal writing, and also suggests improvements for large-scale matters, such as organization and tone. Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Signed by previous owner.

Seller Inventory # 61022

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Legal Writing--Getting It Right and Getting It Written
• Publisher: West Publishing Company, St. Paul, MN
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0314324941
• ISBN 13: 9780314324948
• Binding: Trade paperback
• Edition: Reprint. Third reprint, 1991.
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Individual legal writers encounter varied problems, depending on their writing backgrounds, and the Topical Index can also help identify groups of entries that address these individual problems. So, you can read a series of entries about common kinds of legal writing questions, such as the usage of infer and imply or due to and because of. You may also use this book to understand how legal writing differs from other kinds of writing in its demands for Precision, such as the using that for restrictive clauses and which for non-restrictive clauses. You may also find this book especially helpful to you when you are commenting on another's writing. Teaching good legal writing through written responses requires precise and thorough comments, which are hard to create in the limited time available to most teachers. To make the most of your limited time, you can use the entry on the Principles of Good Legal Writing or Legal Writing Checklist as a checklist of requirements for each paper. Refer writers to the list you choose, or adapt from that list a specific set of goals for each assignment, such as for Complaints or Scholarly Writing. You may also use this book to provide more information that can assist writers in understanding your points, such as the specific examples of useful techniques and general approaches within entries. Choosing different individual entries for different writers allows you to fashion a course that emphasizes what you think your writers need; you can guide writers through the entries with your expertise. Finally, use this book to save time by delegating to it the routine explanations. Rather than write a long description of a principle in the margins of a paper, refer writers to explanations in this book. This allows you to save your time for doing what only you can do, such as looking at the text as a whole, speaking to the individual writers behind that text, and commenting on how the general principles of writing are playing out in this p