Last Saturday, Scribes-The American Society of Legal Writers presented Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with a lifetime-achievement Award for legal writing. I attended the luncheon to soak up legal writing tips from the man legal writing guru Bryan Clark introduced as “the greatest living legal writer,” whose prose is characterized by “clarity, lucidity and bold metaphors.”

Scalia (who once taught legal writing at the University of Virginia Law School) denied that “legal writing” exists as a separate genre of writing; rather, he includes legal writing in the broader category of nonfiction prose. Thus, he considered that the students who performed poorly in his classes didn’t lack legal writing skill: they lacked writing skill.

Scalia’s description of a particular brief that he read while sitting on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was particularly inspiring to those of us who take legal writing seriously. After all these years (Scalia left the D.C. Circuit in 1986), Scalia recounted with pleasure how the brief “woke him up,” “grabbed his attention” and “leapt out of the pack” of the numerous briefs in the case.

As those who have read Making Your Case are aware, Garner and Scalia vehemently disagree concerning whether case citations belong in the text of briefs or should be relegated to footnotes. Commenting on this controversy, Scalia observed that the nature of the common law system itself requires that allusions to authority be scattered throughout the text.

Scalia closed by offering two observations: he asserted that writing genius consists primarily of an ability to place one’s self in the reader’s shoes, and maintained that careless, sloppy writers have careless, sloppy minds.

Because I’m a such a fangirl (though not of Scalia’s politics), I made sure to get pictures with both Scalia and Garner:

And, of course, I got their autographs on my copy of Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges:

 
 
 
As an aside, it’s clear from the luncheon pictures above that Garner is much taller than Scalia. However, take a look at this photo from the back of the Making Your Case book jacket. Hmmm . . . .

Finally, at the luncheon I had the pleasure of meeting Kathleen St. Onge, the winner of the Making Your Case Contest. Kathleen got a shot with both esteemed writers:

For more tips on how to write hard-hitting, effective briefs, check out the recording of our recent teleseminar, Powerful Persuasive Writing Techniques for Your Marketing Materials and Briefs.