Tips to Legal Writing Including Things to Avoid
Tips for Legal Writing
- Write concisely and write short sentences. Try to keep your sentences 20 words or less.
- Focus on one idea per paragraph to make your writing easy to understand.
- Make sure your writing is serious and only include information applicable for your application/trial.
- To ensure your writing is clear and concise, read it out loud. A good rule of thumb is that if you need to re-read a sentence to understand it, you should probably rephrase it.
- Think about what you want to write – what are you asking for and why as well as what evidence do you have? This will organize your ideas and ensure your writing will be fluent.
- Furthermore, be specific by providing exact details (such as dates) and be accurate with the statements you are making.
- Stay consistent with your writing by using the same term or name for something.
- Moreover, pretend your readers do not know about your situation, so provide 1-2 sentences of context to help them understand your case.
- Make sure you clearly state what it is you are asking for – state your point at the start of your document and then support your point using evidence and submissions.
- A professional tip is to type out your document if you can.
- Read over your document multiple times and get someone else to edit it so that you can catch spelling and grammar mistakes.
- Lastly, get a lawyer to legally review your document as they can catch errors that you may not be able to see.
Things to avoid in Writing
- Avoid using wordy phrases like “for the reason that” or “adequate number of” and avoid writing long sentences.
- Do not try to be humorous or sarcastic with your writing, and avoid going into detail about your relationship.
- Do not contradict yourself – you do not want the judge questioning your honesty.
- Remain neutral and truthful with your statements as exaggeration may harm your case.
- Do not state accusations as facts. You want your reader to be able to reach their own conclusion, you are simply presenting them the facts.
- Avoid slangs, idioms and acronyms