I returned a few hours ago from the Legally Female Conference, which is described on the official conference website as “a collaboration between Yale Law Women and the national blog, Ms. JD, that explores the status of women in the legal profession.”
I had been particularly looking forward to an afternoon panel entitled “Technology as a [...]

I’ve always been a grammar stickler; heck, I have fond memories of diagramming sentences in 10th grade English class. Now, thanks to my co-blogger, Susan, I’ve found my soulmate (don’t tell my husband!): Grammar Girl.
Grammar Girl (a/k/a Mignon Forgarty) is a freelance technical writer and editor who writes a blog and produces a podcast about—you [...]

In an article entitled “Speech Crimes” in today’s New York Times, Patricia O’Conner reviews When You Catch and Adjective, Kill it, by Ben Yagoda and The Fight for English by David Crystal. Reviewing these two books in a single article allows O’Conner to juxtapose Yagoda’s centrist position between language prescriptivists (those who try to preserve [...]

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox addressed the 2007 Corporate Counsel Institute this week and emphasized the SEC’s commitment to the use of plain English. As I have mentioned previously in this blog, the SEC has been a long-time champion of plain English and its website includes a helpful “Plain English Handbook.”
According to Cox, the SEC [...]

There are many dangers in litigation, but death is usually not one of them.  The WSJ blog reports on a wrongful death action in Los Angeles that arose during a trial.  According to the complaint and the WSJ, he plaintiff’s decedent “tripped and fell over electrical cords that were attached to equipment set up by [...]

I have long wondered how you can avoid long sections of white space in text when you include a URL.  Word views the URL as one word and moves the entire URL to the next line, leaving the preceding line with too much blank space.  Eugene Volokh has a couple of suggestions to fix this.  [...]

Do you remember the recent contract case that was decided by the placement of a comma?   In its Q&A section, the Chicago Manual of Style addressed the placement of a comma in another contract, a store’s return policy.
The policy provided that the store would “refund the purchase price of any previewed, defective or mislabeled products [...]

I hosted Blawg Review # 98 today over at the Legal Research and Writing Blog.  In case you don’t know, Blawg Review is the blog carnival for everyone interested in law.  Hope you enjoy!

For legal writing content that’s a little more challenging than the articles in Thomson West’s Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing, check out the Legal Writing Journal over at the Social Science Research Network. (To find this specific journal, go to http://www.ssrn.com/lsn/index.html and click on “subject matter journals” in the left sidebar). Like Perspectives, [...]

I know, I know: most lawyers don’t view Thomson West as a benefactor to the legal profession. Mention West to a lawyer, and you’re likely to get an earful about how the company messed up a Westlaw bill once again, or how it insists on charging for paper updates for volumes that have long since [...]