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

Seventh sin: “Not being concise limits understanding.”

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

The Easy Reading Bill has enormous potential to impact both the legal field and those who practice it. However, its conversion into law from a practical perspective could prove unfeasible, as despite efforts to establish accessible reading formats, it is likely that judicial and administrative officials may not comply.

This is because, as Diego López mentions, we continue to commit eleven cardinal sins that hinder the understanding of legal texts. 😅

The appropriate use of technology, Legal Design, and education are key tools to tackle this challenge and turn these cardinal sins into applicable principles. It is not necessary to turn this initiative into law to generate a significant impact in the legal field.

Today, we delve into the seventh sin: “not being concise limits understanding.” As we have explored in our series, legal writings tend to be: Verbose and repetitive. We use unnecessary words or phrases that do not add meaning to the text. Moreover, we repeat ideas that have already been developed in writing. 🗣️🔁 Poorly delimited.

We do not write “correctly” nor with the necessary structure to enhance our texts. 📝❌

According to Diego López, unnecessary verbosity is directly proportional to length. The author found that this results from an inability to be concise. As a result, arguments become diluted due to their unnecessary length and lack of structure. 📏🤷‍♂️

The author finds that diluted and powerless arguments are not successful in conveying what one wants to communicate. They stop captivating the reader, forcing them to do “quick” readings, to review the text several times, or to simply not read it at all 🚫📖.

Therefore, the inability to produce concise writings hinders the possibility of deep and efficient reading. Diego López points out that this incapacity and anxiety to say everything occurs when: There is a dogmatic or historical reconstruction.

Unnecessarily detailed procedural backgrounds are provided. Arguments are repeated with the intention of forcibly inserting the desired communication.

Excessively long quotations are included. 📚✂️ These examples reveal that in practice there is a cultural belief that more pages indicate a job well done or good due diligence in legal practice. The truth is quite the opposite. 🧐❌. That’s why it’s worth reflecting on and being critical of ourselves about how concise we are being when exercising our profession.

Together with WOW Legal Experience, we know that we can help you transform today’s ‘sin’ into the principle of simplicity. Good legal diligence starts with good writing and promoting clarity in legal communication in your organization.💼🌟 💡

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

La versión en español puede encontrarse aquí:

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