Guide to Legal Writing Style, Fifth Edition

This concise paperback focuses on the nuances of legal writing style and provides novice legal writers with the skills they need to polish their writing. Guide to Legal Writing Style, Fourth Edition, intended as an ancillary to any basic legal writing text, expands what students learn in their first-year courses by providing additional techniques and style tips that will help make their writing more precise, readable and elegant.

This highly regarded paperback, specifically directed at legal writers, offers

crisp, pointed advice written in a personal and humorous style

lucid organization that helps students find the information they need most, including practice with basic skills and helpful advice on organization, sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, and formatting

an emphasis on legal ethics throughout, with most of the examples and exercises focusing on ethical issues

a chapter on organization that compares and contrasts undergraduate terms and goals with those expected by a legal audience

a guide that helps students guard against plagiarism

short, end-of-chapter exercises, with the answers at the back of the book, that strengthen skills and provide opportunities for self-testing

Special features in the Fourth Edition include:

an updated interactive CD-ROM with multiple exercises to reinforce the materials in the book, which includes updated and expanded tests of basic skills and click-on answers and explanations

a new chapter testing common errors in professional writing, with explanations as well as succinct answers

new checklists that reinforce essential advice of each chapter