Does Your Writing Win the Argument?
“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
Judges, juries, and opposing counsel don’t experience your reasoning — they experience your writing
When Legal Arguments Get Lost on the Page
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 — and without the right training, even the most experienced litigators cannot fully control how their arguments land. The Reader Expectation Approach provides the necessary skill to control writing impact.
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. Institutions implementing REA have earned billions in additional funding with more persuasive proposals.
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.
Recognized for a Lifetime of Legal Writing Excellence
In 2011, George David Gopen won the Legal Writing Institute’s lifetime achievement award “The Golden Pen”
George was recognized for his:
- 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 Dr. George’s professional recognition. Discover George’s articles on legal writing.
George Gopen is available to serve as an expert witness in
cases that involve legal writing. Request a discovery call.
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.
Case Study: Plain English
Thirty-seven of the 50 United States now require public legal documents to be written in ‘Plain English.’ (This includes insurance policies, landlord-tenant agreements, and the like.) Yet the States struggle to define ‘Plain English’ and have turned to well-known ‘readability formulae’ as a substitute. These formulae work well enough for deciding whether a story belongs in a sixth grade reader. But they fail miserably when applied to legal documents of any sophistication.
In 2008, George Gopen served as an expert witness in a lawsuit on what constituted plain English. A major company had used a document to explain major changes in their 75,000 employee’s benefits. Gopen analyzed it using five of the most significant principles of the Reader Expectation Approach. Although failing all of the tests defined by the statute, Gopen demonstrated that the prose was extremely well written.
After two years of litigational scrimmaging, the plaintiff’s law firm withdrew its class action suit two weeks before the trial. Hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. The plaintiff neither asked the Court for a right to re-submit nor to negotiate with the corporation for a settlement. When the Court asked the plaintiffs’ lawyer why they were doing this, they replied, “We can’t beat Gopen’s argument.”
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Legal precedent may be set by your argument.
Can you really afford to be misunderstood?
If your firm is investing in professional development, choose the proven method that leading law firms trust. Schedule a short conversation to determine which training package best fits your goals. Request a complimentary 20-minute discovery call to discuss training or expert witness services.