When editing, good direction makes everyone's life easier
Bryan A. Garner. (Photo by Winn Fuqua Photography)
Whether you’re an in-house lawyer supervising outside lawyers or a manager of junior lawyers, you’ll occasionally if not routinely be expected to oversee the written work product of other lawyers.
These two situations require different approaches. Outside lawyers may seem to occupy a higher rung within the profession, and they’ll have egos. Junior colleagues are more overtly your mentees, and your teacherly attitude toward them is much more to be expected. In either situation, of course, it’s important to be collegial and friendly.
You might start by specifying a style manual to be followed. “Please use the current Bluebook for citations and the current Redbook for everything else.” If you’re in Texas, citations would follow the Bluebook as modified by Texas Rules of Form: The Greenbook. If you’re in California, you might specify the California Style Manual. And if in New York, follow that state’s Law Reports Style Manual (free online). You might even choose the spanking new Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition), which has a healthy dose of guidance for citing legal and public documents.
You might get some pushback: “Wait a second: You want me to bill time to ensure we’re complying with a style manual?”
My suggested answer: “Of course not. A basic knowledge of legal style is taken as a given—it’s as fundamental to legal writing as knowing the major and chromatic scales is to a musician. If you have some doubt on a point, such as whether landowner is one word or two, look it up. It should rarely take more than 30 seconds.”
You’re simply setting expectations that the work product should be accurate and clean.
For litigators
Let’s say you’re an in-house corporate lawyer working with outside counsel on a motion or brief. I often hear the complaint that outside lawyers don’t complete a draft in time for in-house counsel to provide meaningful review. It’s a common source of frustration.
The problem lies in your waiting to see the final draft. Let’s say the filing must occur on the 30th of the month. You’ve asked for a polished draft on the 22nd, but you might not get it until the 27th. That’s no good.
Here’s my suggestion. Ask for point headings by the 15th. The conversation goes like this:
You: I’d like to see our point headings by the 15th.
Outside counsel: What do you mean by point headings?
You: The propositions we’re advancing. We want SG-style point headings, just like the U.S. Solicitor General’s Office. Full-sentence headings that will mark the sections of the brief.
OC: Oh, we don’t do those until we’re actually writing the brief.
You: But I must see those in advance. They structure the writing; they amount to a propositional outline.
OC: How? Can you show me examples?
You: They’re everywhere. Look at the December-January 2023-2024 issue of the ABA Journal. Garner devoted a whole column to them. Or check out The Winning Brief, where he sets out 18 SG-style tables of contents showing point headings for all kinds of briefs. Or you can look at the SG’s website.
OC: Why do you want this?
You: Before the brief gets written, I want to see the precise points we’ll argue and the order in which they’ll appear. I may well revise them, but that needs to happen before the brief gets drafted. Then I can expect a good polished draft on the 22nd.
The firm will also probably bill less time in drafting the brief if you succeed in your congenial but firm insistence here.
Once the team has agreed on a working draft of the point headings, have a conversation like this:
You: We want the opening paragraph to explain, in plain English, what the problem is, what the best solution is and why—written in a way that anyone might understand. None of the legalistic windup setting out all the parenthetical shorthand terms. And no insults directed at the other side. None of that. I’m really looking forward to seeing your draft.
If you’re not an in-house lawyer but instead a partner or some other type of supervisor, you can readily adapt these types of requests to your situation.
For transactional lawyers
If you’re doing contracts or other transactional documents, I’d simply say this:
You: Please make sure the document is in good straightforward English. No unnecessary legalisms. If you don’t mind, call the parties by name: Minotaur for us and PintoFax for the other side. That reads so much better than licensor and licensee.
OC: Sure thing.
You: Oh, and please put short headings on every separate paragraph in the agreement. That’s the style we like. Thanks.
In all sorts of ways, if they comply (and who wouldn’t?), you’ll get a better draft from the lawyers you’ve hired.
Again, if you’re not an in-house lawyer but instead a supervisor, adapt these requests to your situation.
If you ask others to edit
One pervasive but easily manageable problem in legal writing is pride of authorship. Do what you can to cultivate a culture in which everyone is expected to be a competent editor. If you’re a supervisor, train your juniors to edit your own work in ways that you find acceptable.
Junior: What do you want me to do?
You: Apart from correcting any errors, I want you to tighten the piece and sharpen it.
Junior: What do you mean?
You: I expect a minimum of two edits per page. No unmarked pages. Show me intelligent edits. Cut words, but make sure it reads naturally. And if I’ve been vague here and there, sharpen the wordings. Make me sound more like the voice of reason. Anything you can do to make me sound like the voice of reason is good.
Junior: But you have so much more experience.
You: Maybe so, but everybody needs an editor. Good edits make writers look smarter. So use your intelligence to make me look smarter. But merely making marks isn’t enough: They must be useful marks. Don’t just spot problems: Fix them. I don’t want stray question marks in the margin. I’m trying to train you to make the edits that a professional copy editor would make—somebody on the copy desk of Harper’s, The Atlantic or, for that matter, the ABA Journal.
Junior: That’s a lot of pressure.
You: Not really. It’s basic competence for the law office. I’ll be evaluating your edits, and I hope I’ll be lauding them. Just remember, in this office, good editing is always viewed as an act of friendship.
In any office, good editing should be encouraged and viewed as professional and friendly. It benefits everyone.
This story was originally published in the February-March 2025 issue of the ABA Journal under the headline: “Mindful Guidance: When editing, good direction makes everyone’s life easier.”
Since founding LawProse Inc. in 1990, Bryan A. Garner has trained more than 265,000 lawyers and judges in advocacy and legal drafting. He is the chief editor of Black's Law Dictionary and author of The Winning Brief, Legal Writing in Plain English and The Elements of Legal Style.
This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.
