Great Legal Writing: Lessons From SCOTUS on Grammar, Style, Analogies, and More
Creating Effective Analogies; How to Emulate the Justices' Writing Styles
Course Details
- smart_display Format
On-Demand
- signal_cellular_alt Difficulty Level
Intermediate
- work Practice Area
Class Action and Other Litigation
- event Date
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
- schedule Time
1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT
- timer Program Length
90 minutes
-
This 90-minute webinar is eligible in most states for 1.5 CLE credits.
-
This CLE webinar will offer guidance on how to be a great legal writer. The panel will discuss which grammar and style rules really matter and how to modernize one's writing, using conclusions derived from a study of 10,000 pages of recent U.S. Supreme Court opinions. The panel will also discuss best disciplines and habits for achieving quality legal writing and lessons from recent Supreme Court opinions on effective analogies.
Professor Barton is the Director of the Legal Communication and Research Skills (LComm) Program and a Professor of Legal Writing. She is a former appellate judicial clerk and an award-winning journalist. Professor Barton's latest book analyzing the writing style of U.S. Supreme Court justices, The Supreme Guide to Writing, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2024. She also has authored So Ordered: The Writer’s Guide for Aspiring Judges, Judicial Clerks, and Interns (Wolters Kluwer 2017). Professor Barton coauthored The Handbook for the New Legal Writer (Aspen 2023), a popular law school textbook now in its third edition, that aims to demystify the process of legal writing and inspire beginning and experienced legal writers.
Mr. Coale is widely recognized as one of the top appellate lawyers in Texas, his diverse experience ranges from sophisticated constitutional issues in the United States Supreme Court to defense of a payphone operator before a Tarrant County Justice of the Peace. He is among the few lawyers to have handled a matter in all fifteen of the Texas intermediate courts of appeal, and is the only known Texas appellate lawyer whohas been fictionalized in a romance-novel series as the lawyer for an outlaw motorcycle gang. Mr. Coale is a frequent commentator on legal issues, he publishes 600camp.com, a popular blog about business cases in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and 600commerce.com, a similar blog about the Dallas Court of Appeals and Texas Supreme Court. His recent articles have appeared in Slate, Salon, the Times of Israel, and the Cornell Law Review Online.
Outstanding legal writing is nuanced, persuasive, transparent, and precise. Quality legal writing may look effortless but takes hard work. Poor legal writing can and has led to confusion, litigation, and significant financial losses.
Many lawyers follow the rules they were taught decades ago, have forgotten others, or were simply never taught some. Many of these rules remain best practices, but the Supreme Court has shown by example new ways of making the complex simple, of bringing cases alive, and of mastering analogies.
Listen as this esteemed panel identifies the best writing trends approved by the highest court and offers guidance to attorneys on how to polish their style and abandon bad writing habits.
- Grammar rules SCOTUS justices follow
- Disciplines and habits of great writing
- Creating effective analogies
- How to emulate the justices' writing styles
The panel will review these and other key issues:
- What is the "cleaned up" citation?
- What are best practices for avoiding awkward use of "they" or "them"?
- Does typography matter?
Related Courses
Impeachment and Proposed Amendments to FRE 801(d): Prior Inconsistent Statements in Social Media and Inactive Websites
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT
Defeating Class Actions Post-Certification: Procedural and Substantive Strategies
Thursday, December 4, 2025
1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT