Plain English for Lawyers

By Richard C. Wydick

Book Overview

The National Jurist featured Plain English for Lawyers in its August 2021 list of "Three Books to Read During Law School," saying, "This one speaks for itself. The book is a quick punch of information: it provides helpful tips to improve your legal writing while familiarizing you with many of the terms of art you are likely to see down the road as a legal professional." Wydick's Plain English for Lawyers--now in its fifth edition--has been a favorite of law students, legal writing teachers, lawyers, and judges for almost 40 years. In January 2005, the Legal Writing Institute gave Wydick its Golden Pen Award for having written Plain English for Lawyers. The Legal Writing Institute is a non-profit organization that provides a forum for discussion and scholarship about legal writing, analysis, and research. The Institute has over 1,300 members representing all of the ABA-accredited law schools in the United States. Its membership also includes law teachers from other nations, English teachers, and practicing lawyers. The LWI award states: "Plain English for Lawyers ... has become a classic. Perhaps no single work has done more to improve the writing of lawyers and law students and to promote the modern trend toward a clear, plain style of legal writing." The National Jurist recently featured Plain English for Lawyers on its list of "Three Books to Read During Law School," saying, "This one speaks for itself. The book is a quick punch of information: it provides helpful tips to improve your legal writing while familiarizing you with many of the terms of art you are likely to see down the road as a legal professional." How does the fifth edition of Plain English for Lawyers differ from its predecessors? It remains (in size only!) a little book, small enough and palatable enough not to intimidate over-loaded law students. "Most of the text remains the same," Wydick says, "but in the past seven years I've learned some new things about writing in English, and I want to share that with the readers." In addition, the exercises at the end of the chapters are different (a welcome change for long-time teachers who are tired of the old ones). Finally, the teacher's manual includes additional exercises that teachers can give to students who want or need extra practice.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594601518
• ISBN13: 9781594601514
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Carolina Academic Press
• Length: 139 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

One of those style books that ranscebds its genre.

I'm a lawyer who is considered a wordsmith by colleagues and judges. This is one of the most important books I've ever encountered. I was exposed to it in my first law school year's writing class, and its lessons have remained with me since. Banish the passive voice! (unless deliberately and thoughfully chosen and used). This is not merely a key to fluidity in writing, but in a sense a moral imperative. Actions are attributable to actors - they don't simply occur. If you're asserting an action took place, you and your reader should know who or what you claim set it in motion. This necessitates intellectual rigor and clarity. Also, I remember and have employed for twenty-five years Wydick's apt metaphor that good legal writing is like fine cabinetmaking: the skill of the craftsman is shown by the crafted joints not requiring glue, just as the quality of a piece of prose is shown by its lack of reliance on "glue words" (read the book). I've used the lessons of Wydick's brief book as a lawyer, writer and writing teacher. I've given it to colleagues, non-lawyers and young relatives. Their writing uniformly improved.

A Legal-Writing Classic

This book provides great advice and practical, well-designed exercises. Once considered radical by most lawyers, the book has helped reform legal writing, teaching a generation of lawyers that their writing "should not differ, without good reason, from ordinary well-written English."The book is also a model of effective prose. It's clear and understandable even to a first-year law student. Yet it's also valuable to seasoned lawyers, especially to those die-hard lawyers who insist that legal writing should remain dense, and often incomprehensible, just because it's always been that way.Well-respected experts such as Wydick and Garner reject that notion. And clients, who often succeed or fail (and sometimes live or die) by their lawyers' words, should reject it too.

If only every Lawyer read this...

This book was required reading for my first year in law school. After having read through it, I am glad it was. I wish that more lawyers were required to read it.'Plain English for Lawyers' helps everyone write effectively from the Law Student, the practicing Lawyer, the Judge on the Bench, or just somebody that wants to write a persuasive or complicated report how to Several frequent exercises are included to give the reader an opportunity to practice. Examples are plentiful, and illustrated well.The last chapter covers punctuation. This chapter makes the book a reference worth keeping. I would recommend to anyone needing a reference for writing briefs, memorandum, or legal correspondence to keep this book on hand.

A ground-breaker that became a classic.

I first read this book in 1989, and I loved it. It made so much sense, yet it seemed so radical to a young associate at a large law firm. But the advice in this book has been around since 1978. Back then, it was breaking new ground. Now, its advice, though common among plain-English advocates, is still needed by the practicing bar. How great it would be if every lawyer followed Wydick's advice in this book.

Wish I read it in law school

I bought this book during my first year of law school. It was recommended, but not required reading, so I tossed it aside. Big mistake.Now that I am getting paid for my work product, I am more concerned about its quality. So, I finally opened the book. It is a quick and easy read, but oh so helpful. Every positive thing posted about the book is dead on. Reading Plain English for Lawyers has been the best CLE of the year.