The busy-ness of law practice
A commenter writes:
The problem is that, ironically, legal practice discourages good writing. . . . [One] reason is that most lawyers take on more work than they can do well. It may be their own fault, but they don’t have enough time to edit and proofread their writing.This is true, and the commenter is not the first to acknowledge it:
The modern practice of law does not tolerate the type of revisory process necessary to produce a polished product--the "well-managed" law firm has more work to do that it can complete in a given span of time.Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 518 (2d ed., Oxford U. Press 1995).
I've quoted this on my blog before, but it is true.
3 Comments:
And, clients aren't willing to pay to have perfect work product. More often than not, clients are pragmatic: they want "good enough" to get what they want.
Contracts are a perfect example of this problem. No one wants to spend 30 hours drafting a contract. They want 5 hours to get them a "good enough" contract.
Clients are more lenient when their business is on the line during litigation. Litigators get many more hours to draft legal briefs that are frequently shorter and less intricate than their transactional counterparts.
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I have been a client. No litigation, no contracts, so perhaps my comments don't count. But in letters between my attorney and their attorney, I wanted careful editing (in fact, I edited them myself), no unnecessary words, polish, and highly intelligent writing. That is, writing that no one could misunderstand.
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