Legal Research and Writing

Legalese is the formal and technical language of legal documents that is often to hard to understand. As legal writers we want to avoid this complex form of writing and instead make our thoughts and legal analysis clear and precise. Here are some library resources to help prevent legalese in your legal writing. 

Writing style is how the writer chooses to express himself or herself through writing. While every writer has their own unquie style that is specific to them, there are still resources that can help create a more coehsive writing style. 

What transforms a good paper to a great paper is editing. As one of the most important steps in the legal research and writing process, editing takes place once the first draft is completed and you are rereading your draft to see whether the paper is well-organized, the transitions between paragraphs are smooth, and the evidence really supports your argument. 

Here are a list of other elements of your legal writing that can be edited. 

Content

Have you done everything the assignment requires? Are the claims you make accurate? If it is required to do so, does your paper make an argument? Is the argument complete? Are all of your claims consistent? Have you supported each point with adequate evidence? Is all of the information in your paper relevant to the assignment and/or your overall writing goal?

Overall structure

Does your paper have an appropriate introduction and conclusion? Is your thesis clearly stated in your introduction? Is it clear how each paragraph in the body of your paper is related to your thesis? Are the paragraphs arranged in a logical sequence? Have you made clear transitions between paragraphs? One way to check the structure of your paper is to make a reverse outline of the paper after you have written the first draft. 

Does each paragraph have a clear topic sentence? Does each paragraph stick to one main idea? Are there any extraneous or missing sentences in any of your paragraphs? 

Clarity

Have you defined any important terms that might be unclear to your reader? Is the meaning of each sentence clear? (One way to answer this question is to read your paper one sentence at a time, starting at the end and working backwards so that you will not unconsciously fill in content from previous sentences.) Is it clear what each pronoun (he, she, it, they, which, who, this, etc.) refers to? Have you chosen the proper words to express your ideas? Avoid using words you find in the thesaurus that aren’t part of your normal vocabulary; you may misuse them.

Style

Have you used an appropriate tone (formal, informal, persuasive, etc.)? Is your use of gendered language (masculine and feminine pronouns like “he” or “she,” words like “fireman” that contain “man,” and words that some people incorrectly assume apply to only one gender—for example, some people assume “nurse” must refer to a woman) appropriate? Have you varied the length and structure of your sentences? Do you tends to use the passive voice too often? Does your writing contain a lot of unnecessary phrases like “there is,” “there are,” “due to the fact that,” etc.? Do you repeat a strong word (for example, a vivid main verb) unnecessarily?

Citations

Have you appropriately cited quotes, paraphrases, and ideas you got from sources? Are your citations in the correct format?

As you edit at all of these levels, you will usually make significant revisions to the content and wording of your paper. Keep an eye out for patterns of error; knowing what kinds of problems you tend to have will be helpful, especially if you are editing a large document like a thesis or dissertation. Once you have identified a pattern, you can develop techniques for spotting and correcting future instances of that pattern. For example, if you notice that you often discuss several distinct topics in each paragraph, you can go through your paper and underline the key words in each paragraph, then break the paragraphs up so that each one focuses on just one main idea.

Adapted from the Writing Center of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Editing and Proofreading."

Here is a list of library references that will help you edit your legal writing by avioding grammer, spelling, punctuation, and typographical error, avoiding wordiness and legalese, proofreading, postwriting steps, writing technquies and many more tools that will help you produce a fully edited legal work.