Appellate Advocacy Research Guide: Brief Writing

The aim of every brief is always the same: to persuade. This means that there are fundamentals that must be adhered to in order to create a good brief, and big mistakes must be avoided. The book can utilized as an outline or a refresher for any type of brief that must be written, whether it s a main brief, reply brief, or sur-reply, and whether it s a lower court or appellate brief.

This book is another of the texts that serve as course books for appellate advocacy classes. The authors, a retired judge and a veteran trial lawyer, lead the reader through each step of the legal writing and oral argument process highlighting and addressing the nuances of trial practice as only a veteran judge and lawyer can.

This concise treatment of brief-writing focuses on pretrial motion and appellate briefs, as well as oral arguments in trial and appellate courts. The book contains helpful examples of trial and appellate briefs, and a guided tour of the unique process of writing a brief.

The author uses examples from top appellate layers in hundreds of well-known cases to provide 50 concrete writing tips that law students and practitioners can use to improve their writing.

Intended as a supplement to appellate law coursebooks, this book was written to show students how appellate attorneys persuade courts to adopt their clients' position through written briefs. It offers excerpts from a number of persuasive briefs annotated with the authors commentary and analysis.

In the first part of this book, individual chapters cover advanced legal writing topics such as rhetoric, voice, emotion, metaphor, and narrative. The second part of the book introduces famous cases, with the story of each case. Chapter introductions provide interesting insights, such as historical context, the story of the case and of the litigation of it, information about the lawyers who wrote the briefs on both sides, what the courts decided, and, where relevant, about what has happened since.

Written by one of the pre-eminent scholars in the field of legal writing and the editor of Black's Law Dictionary, this book explains the art of effective writing in 100 concise, practical, and easy-to-use tips, proving that the key to writing well is to understand the judicial readership. Each tip is followed by a series of examples and explanations.