The Trial Practice Tips Weblog

Banish These Words from Your Lexicon

At The Third Apple, Bill Wilson writes about "Legalese and other words to banish," including enjoin, "comes now" (a favorite target), and purported.

Timeout for Tech

Here are two posts from other weblogs worth reading:

"Review: TranscriptPad -- review and manage depositions on your iPad," by Jeff Richardson at iPhone J.D. Richardson reviews a new $50 iPad app called TranscriptPad, an app dedicated to the task of reviewing depositions. "With TranscriptPad on my iPad, I'm actually looking forward to the next time I have to review a bunch of depositions, and I don't believe I've ever said that before."

"CCCleaner - Clean House Today," by Rick Georges at Future Lawyer. Georges writes, "CCCleaner is a free software tool that will clean up your registry, erase files you no longer need, remove history, cookies and temporary files."

Legal Writing Tip: Remote Relative Pronouns

According to Bryan Garner, a remote relative pronoun is a "prime indicator of a sloppy sentence." A relative pronoun such as that or which is "remote" when it doesn't appear immediately after the noun it modifies.

Garner provides these examples:

Defendants knowingly conspired to bring securities onto the market that could not be legally marketed.

There is an outstanding warrant against Mr. Erutu in Ethiopia, which on its face declares that he is to be arrested for expressing his political beliefs.

Sentences like these cause confusion in the reader. In every case, the sentence should be rewritten so that the relative pronoun follows the noun it modifies.

Source: The Winning Brief, by Bryan A. Garner.

Related post: "Self-Editing Tips for Legal Writers."

Experts and Costs

A tip from Michael J. Wagner: When selecting an expert, don't automatically choose the expert with the lowest rate.

It there is a substantial reason for the higher rate, then the more expensive expert may be more efficient. Many experienced experts have higher rates because they have done the work before and can now do it faster . . . The result of somewhat higher rates and much greater efficiency may be a lower bill.

Source: "Expert problems," by Michael J. Wagner, The Litigation Manual: Pretrial (ABA Litigation).