Good writing makes readers want to keep reading. It makes them remember the writing and the writer. It persuades people and makes them act. And it can impact a law firm's bottom line.
Many lawyers believe they excel at writing.
After all, a high percentage of lawyers majored in English and other liberal arts when they were undergraduates. And all wrote extensively during law school. As full-fledged lawyers, some write exceptionally well. Yet the confidence others have in their writing skills is misplaced. In general, the quality of legal writing is poor, rife with convoluted phrasing, multi-syllabic words, passive verbs, unnecessary prepositional phrases, and extraneous parenthetical asides.