📚✨ Discover the 11 Deadly Sins of Legal Writing! 🚨📝

Eleventh and final sin of our powerful series: drafting “dirty” texts affects the quality of reading and the credibility of our work

Author: Andrés Felipe Rivas
in collaboration with WOW Legal Experience and Copernico

Today, we dive into the eleventh and final sin of our powerful series: drafting “dirty” texts affects the quality of reading and the credibility of our work. Diego López Medina points out that we, as lawyers, have normalized overlooking typographical errors as “minor imperfections.” However, these errors can significantly impact the perceived quality of the content we convey. Therefore, in practice, we find countless excuses to justify to ourselves that these errors are not important. Yet, these so-called “simple typographical errors” affect the quality of reading and the credibility of our work.

According to López Medina, for typographers, these “mere errors” are akin to annoying “flies” that distract the reader and affect their ability to concentrate on the content. The professor additionally considers them as “premature” and “anxious” texts, as they denote a lack of preparation by the professional. For this reason, he points out that errors of this nature are and should be treated as real mistakes. The defects of not correcting them are that the reader not only finds a “dirty” or “poorly presented” text but it also affects the credibility of the author, and their reputation becomes relative.

To avoid falling into this “sin,” here are some suggestions you can start implementing:

• Reread our texts aloud;
• Use but do not abuse the spell checker;
• Do not rely solely on the spell checker, we are the best editors we can be;
• Rely on a peer with more experience for a conscious read-through. This implies making an effort for this person to read only with the aim of providing efficient feedback.
• Write with enough time, avoiding rush. When things are rushed, the result is generally traumatic. Therefore, planning and organising your agenda and that of your work team is essential for creating sustainable practices that allow for delivering clean texts.

Together with WOW Legal Experience, we want you to keep the “flies” away from your writings so that you can deliver clean texts demonstrating your professional experience and maturity. Proper due diligence in law practice starts with good writing and promoting clarity in legal communication within your organisation.💼🌟.

Therefore, we ask you to let us help you transform your professional practice by integrating this and any other “sins” from our series into “principles.” 💡

Join us to improve legal writing and promote clarity in legal communication!

La versión en español del artículo pueden encontrarla aquí:

English version can be found on this link: https://wowlegalx.medium.com/discover-the-11-deadly-sins-of-legal-writing-603cdff1ec20

#LegalWriting #ConnectAndWrite #EasyReading #WOWLEGAL #TaxLitigation #LegalDesign #LegalDrafting 🌐👩‍⚖️👨‍⚖️