LEGAL ENGLISH-I

BA-LLB 1ST SEM.

Presenter
Man Bdr Jora
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
OF LEGAL WRITING
1. Brevity and Clarity
 Legal writing is taut/tight.
 To tighten your style, try to cut one fourth of every sentence in
your first draft. Strike out every slack (dhilo) syllable.
 Make every word tell.
 Verbosity (wordiness) results from quick, facile writing.
 Watch out for recurrent phrases that are the verbal equivalent
of throat-clearing; for example:
 In my considered opinion, ....
 May I respectfully suggest that
 I should note here that it would be helpful to remember the
fact that
 It should not be forgotten that ....
 Forget the opening flourish and say what you mean.
 Leave out pompous indirection.
 Not this:  But this:
 In large part, it  Our anticipation of
was our such claims long
anticipation of this cautioned us
type of claim against abrogating
which cautioned us the immunity rule.
for so long against
abrogation of the
immunity rule.
COND…
 Cutting your sentence down will produce brevity but not
clarity.
 For example, you might begin with this:
 A will is ambulatory in character and subject to change
or revocation at any time.
 Ambulatory means “subject to change or revocation” and
say sentence in short as:
 A will is ambulatory.
 But it is again to difficult for readers to understand.
 There is legal jargon. So it can be said as:
 A will may be changed or revoked at any time before the
testator dies.
 is revision uses more words but is more immediately
comprehensible to many more readers.
COND…
 State your thoughts positively, not
negatively.
 Rather than:
 The decision was not wrong,
 Write:
 The decision was correct.
 Instead of increasing deemphasis, say
decreasing emphasis.
 When the context allows:
 Not this:  But this:
 did not have  lacked support
support  forgot
 did not recall  inapposite
 not apposite  outdated
 not current  unimportant;
 not important trivial
 not on purpose of  accidental
 no use  useless
 Give enough supporting detail, but avoid
excessive detail.
 Omit what is tedious or irrelevant, and
suppress what is tedious and necessary.
 Good writers eagerly retain facts that serve a
variety of purposes.
 Keep whatever expedites the argument,
builds up the reasoning, or strikes home the
legal and moral principles involved.
2. Simplicity of Structure
 Structure your thoughts simply and directly.
 To order your ideas sensibly, you’ll need to begin
your journey with an itinerary, however sketchy.
 Not everyone has a knack for outlining.
 You shouldn’t start writing sentences and paragraphs
before you have a plan for the entire piece.
 If you begin with a fairly detailed outline, you’re
better able to know the relevance of what you write
in any given section.
 Simple structure helps ensure that you reach your
conclusion only after working through all the
necessary steps.
COND…
 The most prominent positions in a unit of
writing (a sentence, a paragraph, or an
entire book) are the beginning and the end.
 Concentrate on how you begin and end each
sentence, each paragraph, each letter, each
multivolume treatise.
 Simple structure supports readers to
understand the text in easy way.
 Waste of time is stopped by using simple
structure.
 3. Organizing Arguments
 Brief-writers follow an issue-by-issue arrangement.
 Issue-by-issue arrangement orders thought logically
 Structure reveals the sequence of thinking or the merit of the
points under discussion.
 Critical argument usually progresses in this way:

1. Stating the issues

2. Stating the facts
3. Explaining the legal premises involved in the first (most important)
issue
4. Marshaling the critical evidence on the first issue
5. Weighing the conflicting evidence on the first issue
6. Resolving the conflicts on the first issue in the advocate’s favor
7. Explaining the legal premises involved in the second issue
8. Marshaling the critical evidence on the second issue
9. Weighing the conflicting evidence on the second issue
10. Resolving the conflicts on the second issue in the advocate’s
favor
11. Urging a particular conclusion
 The order might vary to suit your immediate
purpose.
 What you want to avoid is the type of
argument that, say, jumps straight into the
evidence—while the reader doesn’t yet know
what to focus on—
 then points out discrepancies in the
evidence,
 then raises an issue and posits a verdict,
 then rejects unfavorable evidence, and
 finally restates the verdict.
 Lawyers allow their opponents to dictate the order of
arguments.
 An opponent’s order favors the opponent.
 You should order your own arguments according to
how you have framed the issues.
 Judges need not follow the argumentative pattern of
advocates; judges ought to adjudicate (nyay garnu)
the issues in what strikes them as the best, most
logical order.
 We don’t want to leave the audience with a bad
impression.
 If we have available to us a number of relatively
strong and weak arguments,
 we might find it best to start out with a strong
argument,
 then slip in some of the weaker arguments, and
 then end up with the strongest argument.
4. Constructing Paragraphs
 A paragraph marks the full development of a single
idea.
 It develops a unit of thought that moves the reader
toward a conclusion.
 When revising your prose, pay close attention to the
movement within individual paragraphs.
 If you’ve made two major points in a single
paragraph or have included something extraneous to
the idea you’re developing, divide or cut.
 Paragraphs may be short or long.
 Make paragraphs more than one sentence but less
than a full page.
 One sentence paragraphs aren’t forbidden.
 They serve as good transitional devices, as with the
middle paragraph here:
 We are able thus to delude ourselves by giving
“reasons” for our attitudes. When challenged by
ourselves or others to justify our positions or our
conduct, we manufacture ex post facto a host of
“principles” which we induce ourselves to believe are
conclusions reasoned out by logical processes from
actual facts in the actual world. So we persuade
ourselves that our lives are governed by Reason.

 This practice of making ourselves appear, to ourselves

and others, more rational than we are, has been
termed “rationalization.”

 Rationalization not only conceals the real foundations

of our biased beliefs but also enables us to maintain,
side by side as it were, beliefs which are inherently
incompatible. For many of our biased beliefs are
contradicted by other beliefs
 Your approach depends on the relationship of
the ideas contained in the paragraph.
 There are nine common ways to develop
paragraphs.
 Your approach depends on the relationship of
the ideas.
 Pattern  Method
 1. assertion, then  argument, exposition
details  argument, narration,
 2. cause and effect exposition
 3. likeness, analogy  argument, exposition
 4. contrast  argument, exposition
 5. data, then conclusion  exposition, narration
 6. chronology  narration
 7. definition  exposition
 8. classification  exposition
 9. particulars in spatial  description
order
COND…
 unity and coherence.
 Paragraphing should show the progression from one
idea to the next.
 We have three means of providing such a transition:

(1) the transitional words and phrases commonly used

for this purpose,
(2) pointing words (such as this or that)y and
(3) echo links (words and phrases that refer notionally
to what has preceded).
 Among the standard words used for transitional
purposes are but, and, besides, even so, further,
moreover, nevertheless, still, therefore, thus, yet.
COND…
 5. Constructing Sentences
 It is only a slight exaggeration to say that a
sentence must be so written that the punch word
comes at the end.
 That the end is emphatic explains why periodic
sentences work. For example:
 But when for the first time I was called to speak
on such an occasion as this, the only thought that
could come into my mind, the only feeling that
could fill my heart, the only words that could
spring to my lips, were a hymn to her in whose
name we are met here tonight—to our mistress,
the Law.
COND…
 Not this: The plaintiffs caused the losses with
but a few exceptions. The beginning of the
sentence is likewise emphatic.
 Speaking of short sentences, lawyers
frequently overlook that paragon of
directness, the simple declarative sentence.
 Thoughts are complex rather than compound.
 Stating ideas as if they were all on the same level
fails to account for the connections between them.
 Graceless writers often string together ideas with
and, not fully employing the syntactic variety of our
language.
 If you use a complex sentence, put the principal idea
in the main clause, not in the subordinate clause.
 The word when often introduces clauses that are
wrongly subordinated:
 Not this:
 They were driving north when suddenly from around
a curve a car crashed into them.
Thank You