Does Your Writing Win the Argument?
Dr. George David Gopen, JD, PhD offers legal writing workshops, seminars, and expert witness services for law firms, law schools, bar associations, and corporate legal departments. His Reader Expectation Approach (REA) has been applied at Harvard Law School, the American Bar Association, and leading litigation firms and judicial institutions nationwide.
Readers Don’t Experience Your Reasoning — They Experience Your Writing
In the real world of legal writing, judges seek not individual pieces of information but the way information forms into ideas. The more complicated the ideas, the more easily they get lost on the page. Lawyers routinely draft documents that are technically correct but difficult to comprehend on first reading. They include every relevant fact, cite every controlling precedent, and structure every section with care. Yet the judge reads the brief and misses the central argument. The clerk summarizes the motion inaccurately. The client calls to ask what it all means.
Legal writing workshops rarely address this problem at its source. The Reader Expectation Approach does. REA teaches legal writers precisely where judges look for the actor in a story, where clerks expect to find the action, and where readers instinctively place the most emphasis — giving lawyers a repeatable, structural framework for controlling how their arguments land.
A 2005 paper in the Gonzaga Law Review by law professor Denise D. Riebe applied reader expectation theory directly to legal writing, arguing that understanding where readers expect to find crucial information is essential to producing effective bar exam answers — and by extension, effective legal prose of any kind.
Read the study →
Legal Writing Workshops Designed for Litigators
Whether on-boarding new associates or developing experienced litigators, legal writing workshops that teach writing from the reader’s perspective will train legal writers to command emphasis and flow in their arguments. When lawyers control how readers experience their prose they win more decisions in court. Clarity creates trust and trust supports any persuasive argument. A case study of six institutions trained in REA has documented a combined increase of $3.4 billion in funding with more persuasive proposals.
In 2002, Brian Hunt, a senior parliamentary counsel writing in Statute Law Review (Oxford University Press), identified Gopen’s reader expectation theory as an approach that sits comfortably within the plain language tradition of legislative drafting.
Read the study →
After attending REA legal writing workshops, lawyers can reliably produce:
- Briefs that highlight the key information where readers expect it, sentence after sentence;
- Public documents that focus steadfastly on what the reader needs to know;
- In-house drafts that speak clearly to the next person in line, whether they were involved in that issue or not.
“The two days spent in the writing seminar were among the most profitable professional training days I have known.”
— Katherine Bartlett Kenneth Pye Professor Emerita of Law, Duke University Law School
George David Gopen is Recognized for
a Lifetime of Legal Writing Excellence
In 2011, George won the Legal Writing Institute’s lifetime achievement “Golden Pen” award in recognition of:
- Lifelong efforts to improve the quality of legal writing;
- Innovation of writing instruction through his Reader Expectation Approach;
- Early calls that law schools measure their success based on their graduates’ abilities upon entering the profession; and
- Vigor and constancy in helping legal writing faculty find their professional identity and voice.
Read more about George’s professional recognition→
Expert Witness Services in Legal Writing and Plain English
Dr. Gopen is available to serve as an expert witness in cases involving legal writing, plain language compliance, and the clarity of written communications. He brings to expert witness engagements the same analytical framework he teaches in REA seminars — a principled, reader-centered method for evaluating whether a document communicates what its author intended.
Thirty-seven states now require public legal documents to be written in Plain English, yet courts and regulators struggle to define what Plain English means in practice. Dr. Gopen has developed a rigorous, five-principle analytical method for evaluating plain language compliance that goes beyond the readability formulae courts have historically relied upon.
Case Study: Plain English Expert Witness
In 2008, Dr. Gopen served as expert witness in a major class action lawsuit involving a document used to explain significant benefits changes to 75,000 employees. Hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. After analyzing the document using five REA principles, Dr. Gopen demonstrated that despite failing the state statute’s readability tests, the prose was in fact extremely well written and clearly communicated the relevant information to its intended audience.
After two years of litigation, the plaintiff’s law firm withdrew the class action suit. When the Court asked the plaintiffs’ lawyer why, they replied: “We can’t beat Gopen’s argument.” Read the article→
Dr. Gopen is available for expert witness engagements. Request a call to discuss your case →
Legal Writing Problems Faced by Litigators
Lawyers must write with accuracy and clarity for judges, clerks, and clients. Yet litigation often succeeds or fails not on the strength of the argument itself, but on how clearly judges and clerks can follow the reasoning. When writers bury crucial information in the wrong locations, they fatigue their readers. A judge reading a brief for the fifth time that day has little patience for prose that makes them work harder than necessary.
Most litigators don’t realize they are doing this. The problem is not intelligence or effort. The problem is that most lawyers have never learned how readers actually process written English. When key information appears in the wrong place, the result is technically correct writing that fails to persuade. In high-stakes litigation, that is a risk no firm can afford.
How REA Legal Writing Workshops Benefit Law Firms
REA legal writing workshops and seminars train lawyers and judges to place key information where their readers are most prepared to find it. Rather than relying on instinct or generic style rules, legal writers learn a precise, repeatable framework for structuring sentences and paragraphs. They discover exactly where judges look for the actor in a story, where clerks expect to find the action, and where readers instinctively place the most emphasis.
Once lawyers see how their sentences are actually being read, they can revise their drafts with confidence and precision. Lawyers who apply these principles achieve the most dramatic and permanent improvement in their professional writing — producing briefs, motions, and legal documents that judges and clients can follow the first time.
Bring REA to Your Firm, Law School, or Legal Department
Dr. Gopen’s legal writing training is available as half-day seminars, full-day workshops, and multi-session programs for law firms, law schools, bar associations, judicial training programs, and corporate legal departments. Training can be scheduled as a single event or as a recurring program customized to your organization’s goals.
For expert witness inquiries, Dr. Gopen accepts a limited number of engagements per year. Early outreach is recommended. Request a complimentary 20-minute discovery call to discuss training or expert witness services.