Writing Shorter Legal Documents: Strategies for Faster and Better Editing by Sandra J. Oster has just been added to the library’s "new book shelf."
This ABA publication is a concise, practical handbook that explains how to quickly and efficiently reduce the length of your legal documents. The author, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in linguistics, maintains that it is the rare legal document that does not need editing. She offers a collection of fast and easy editing tricks that will keep readers within grammatical and court rules, for both length and construction, while preserving and clarifying their legal arguments.
Whether you need to shorten a document in order to improve its readability, to free up space for additional information, or to meet length requirements, the book provides editing strategies and illustrates how to apply those strategies, with examples taken from actual documents like pleadings, opinions, business documents, and correspondence to attorneys and clients.
You can read an excerpt here.
