Editor’s Note This is Wayne Schiess’ final column for Austin Lawyer. His first “Opening Statement” column appeared in the July/August 2007 issue. Since then, he has consistently contributed to our magazine. His dedication to the improvement of legal writing has been invaluable to Austin Lawyer and its readers. From everyone at the Austin Bar, we sincerely thank you, Wayne, for

This column summarizes two kinds of legal-writing plagiarism and then presents a recent article that proposes a new view of plagiarism in law practice. Law-School Plagiarism In In re Zbiegien, a student who committed plagiarism in a law-school seminar paper was confronted, admitted the plagiarism, and accepted the law school’s penalty: a grade of F. Although he disclosed the plagiarism

This column discusses two studies of appellate-brief writing that reached different conclusions and call for different explanations. The first study scored nearly every brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court from 1969 to 2004 using four readability-assessment tools, two of which are described here. The Flesch Reading Ease Scale uses sentence and word length to assess readability and assigns a

Legal writers should always aim for grammatically correct prose. Why? To me, the key reason is to establish and maintain your credibility: When readers see that you know how to write correctly, they are also likely to believe that you stated the facts and law correctly and presented accurate, valid arguments, explanations, or advice. But occasionally, grammar itself becomes an

Anecdotal evidence suggests that, when trying to persuade, presenting three concepts is better than presenting two. Or four. Or more. We see examples of memorable, powerful threes in advertising, in literature, and even in the Declaration of Independence: snap, crackle, and pop I came; I saw; I conquered life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness Yes, I just gave three