An ostrich (and a lawyer), both with their heads in the sand. Bob Marley. A man wearing full safety clothing. A lion eating a giant meat-cake. What do these four images have in common? If you answered: “they’re all the subjects of photos that Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner has gratuitously included in opinions,” you’d [...]

Powerful Writing Techniques to Help You Persuade Judges and Win Clients On Thursday, October 7 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern, I’ll be presenting my popular program, Powerful Writing Techniques to Help You Persuade Judges and Win Clients, as a complimentary webinar. The ability to write forcefully and effectively is critical to your success as a lawyer. [...]

Back in October, I co-presented Powerful Writing Techniques to Help You Persuade Judges and Win Clients with Hon. Gerald Lebovits. The ABA’s GP|Solo Division recorded the session, and will be offering it as part of a teleconference and live audio webcast on Wednesday, February 17 from noon-1:30 p.m. (Eastern). The program will start with a [...]

The spate of fall-like weather we’ve been having lately here in the Northeast reminds me that October is just around the corner and, with it, three live CLEs that I’ll be co-presenting in New York City and Los Angeles. On Thursday, October 8, social media and legal technology maven Nicole Black and I will be [...]

Although legal writing expert Judge Mark Painter wrote an article entitled Legal Writing 201: 30 Suggestions to Improve Readability or How to Write For Judges, Not Like Judges, there’s one judge whose writing is always a pleasure to read: Hon Gerald Lebovits of the New York County Civil Court, Housing Part. Judge Lebovits isn’t your [...]

AttorneysInTransition.com is a new website from Law Bulletin Publishing Co. that focuses (not surprisingly) on issues of concern to lawyers whose careers are in a state of flux. While you’re there, check out my guest post, The Road Less Traveled: Working as a Contract Lawyer. Also, make sure you read this post for more details [...]

This cartoon is courtesy of Courtoons, a blog by Ohio appellate lawyer David Mills that features daily cartoons skewering all aspects of the law. (As a fellow appellate lawyer, I’m also partial to Honest Briefing and A Uniform Normal Person’s System of Citation.)

Thanks to my membership in Scribes – The American Society of Legal Writers, I learned about a free webinar entitled Ethics and Professionalism in Legal Writing: Brief Writing and Writing for Litigation. The webinar was presented by Stetson University College of Law. The panelists are Kirsten Davis, Associate Professor of Law and Director of Legal [...]

Here’s a snippet of the remarks Justice Scalia made at the August 9 Scribes luncheon, when he received a lifetime-achievement Award for legal writing:   For a more in-depth summary of Scalia’s remarks, see my previous post on the subject.

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 [...]