Legal Writing: Writing for Practice

This book provides a systematic approach to all forms of written communication, from memoranda and briefs to e-mail and blogs. The book sets forth three principles for powerful writing and shows how to apply those principles to develop a clean and confident style.

Also available as an e-book. Access from the link above (valid Loyola ID and password required).

The author, a noted jurist and adjunct professor of law offers 40 rules (somewhere between suggestions and laws) to improve legal writing.

The author begins by establishing that the influx of online technology is re-wiring our brains for learning and reading. The bulk of the book is devoted to ten tips for witing to the rewired brain.

New lawyers often struggle to complete the projects they are assigned, often because they do not understand how to apply the skills and knowledge they acquired in law school. This step-by-step guide leads advanced legal writing students and new associates through the process of completing typical assignments. It begins with the essential legal process question of determining the law that applies to the issue at hand and then guides readers through sophisticated questions of how to handle unclear analysis in different types of legal documents.

Forceful writing is one of the most potent weapons of legal advocacy. The author, a former lecturer on law at Harvard Law School applies the universal principles of powerful, vigorous prose to the job of making a legal case--and winning it. The book focuses on the writing of lawyers, not judges, and includes dozens of examples of effective (and ineffective) real-life legal writing--as well as compelling models drawn from advertising, journalism, and fiction.

Also available as Ebook (link to Ebook is in the catalog record, linked above; access with your current LUC username and password).

Point Taken delves into the work of the best judicial opinion-writers and offers a step-by-step method based on practical and provocative examples. Featuring numerous cases and opinions from 34 esteemed judges, Point Taken explores what it takes to turn "great judicial writing" into "great writing".
Also available as Ebook (link to Ebook is in the catalog record, linked above; access with your current LUC username and password).

Also available as an e-book. Access from the link above (valid Loyola ID and password required).

Shelved in the Law Library's Practical Skills collection, near the 3rd floor Reference Desk.

Shelved in the Law Library's Practical Skills collection, near the 3rd floor Reference Desk.

Shelved in the Law Library's Practical Skills collection, near the 3rd floor Reference Desk. Also at Law Permanent Reserve.

Legal Drafting in a Nutshell provides guidance on producing transactional documents, contracts, instruments, legislation, and regulations that solve existing problems and prevent future problems. The book provides both a large scale, macro overview of the drafting process as well as small scale, micro focused discussion of the mechanics of legal documents at the sentence, word, and punctuation level. Legal drafting is as much a thought process as a writing process; clear thinking leads to clear drafting. This book is a guide for clear, structured thinking about drafting in order to provide readers with a structured process to follow when assembling useful legal documents.

Shelved in the Law Library's Practical Skills collection, near the 3rd floor Reference Desk.