The Law Library has many legal writing and style guides available. If you don't know exactly what you are looking for, come ask us! We are here to help.
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From The Winning Brief: 100 Tips for Persuasive Briefing in Trial and Appellate Courts by Bryan Garner:
6. Draft fast.
19. Provide signposts.
23. Cite unobtrusively.
41. Use parallelism
49. Strike pursuant to.
50. Get the that–which distinction.
52. Don’t be a that-bigot.
62. The serial comma and the future of the
Republic.
75. Quote sparingly.
97. Show the equities as well as the law.
Read more at LawProse.org. Also available in the Law Library at KF 251 .G37 2004.
The Law Library of Louisiana was excited to host Bryan Garner, President of LawProse, for a CLE on September 8, 2014.
The CLE was entitled “Advanced Judicial Writing” and was a workshop targeted for judges, judicial clerks and staff attorneys. The CLE emphasized the techniques of first-rate judicial writers. It also demonstrated effective editing techniques: how to choose the best words, how to sharpen and tighten sentences, and how to bridge between paragraphs.
Mr. Garner is a distinguished legal linguist. He serves as editor in chief of Black’s Law Dictionary and is the author of many leading works on legal style, including A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, The Elements of Legal Style, The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style, The Winning Brief, and The Winning Oral Argument. His latest books are Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, cowritten with Justice Antonin Scalia, and Garner on Language and Writing, an anthology published by the American Bar Association. His magnum opus is the 897-page Garner’s Modern American Usage, published by Oxford University Press. It is widely considered the preeminent authority on questions of English usage.
Check out Bryan Garner in conversation with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, hosted by Reuters.
