Seeing Through Legalese: More Essays on Plain Language by Joseph KimbleCarolina Academic Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2017, 273 pages, $25.00
Lawyers are America’s best-paid writers. All day long, they write for a living, composing memos, briefs, contracts, letters and emails. Writing is critical to the legal profession. Good writing helps us understand agreements, arguments, concepts and rules. Good writing entertains, informs and persuades. Good writing affects the administration of justice. Conversely, bad writing bores, complicates, confuses and misleads ─ and goes unread. A lawyer’s arrangement and choice of words will make the difference between a client’s winning or losing, determine how to interpret a contract and ascertain whether someone has followed or broken the law.
