good news: a post from my journal’s blog team made it all the way to slashdot.
bad news: slashdot (more specifically, the blog we’re nominally affiliated with) called our writing ‘surprisingly readable.’ It’s sad that lawyers are supposed to be excellent communicators, and yet our training typically stilts our writing so much that it is surprising when our work can be read by the public.
Shawn Smithwrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt bad news: slashdot (more specifically, the blog we’re nominally affiliated with) called our writing ’surprisingly readable.’ It’s sad that lawyers are supposed to be excellent
Problem is, lawyers by nature don’t speak English, any more than coders do. They speak a highly specialised dialect of technical jargon which is just an incomprehensible to most people as is talk of operating-system kernels. It’s simply a matter of how good any individual is at breaking out of their natural way of thinking in order to explain things to ‘normal’ people (by which I mean anyone other than a lawyer/coder/accountant/etc).
To a certain extent that is true, but lawyers are presumed to be able to break out of that rut in ways that other specialists are not presumed to be.
Trial lawyers, yes. Contract lawyers, not so much.
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