Sentence, Paragraph, Argument, Brief: Meeting the Four Challenges of Legal Writing

View a sample of this title using the ReadNow feature

Sentence, Paragraph, Argument, Brief is a fresh, comprehensive, and above all practical guide to writing briefs, informed by decades of working and teaching at one of the nation’s foremost law firms. The book organizes itself around a single theme: good briefs reflect careful attention to the sequence of words, sentences, paragraphs, and arguments. The book explains how to arrange these building blocks of legal prose, throughout illustrating its guidance with before-and-after examples drawn from filed briefs. Unlike other books on this topic, this book gives as many turnkey tips for organizing arguments and briefs as for drafting sentences and paragraphs. It focuses distinctively on the real-world writing challenges, large and small, that litigators face every day.

The book’s original - but practice-tested - treatment of its subject addresses topics other legal writing texts largely ignore. These include how to:

• Reposition words in a sentence to enhance its persuasiveness
• Classify paragraphs to help organize arguments
• Enhance paragraph flow and coherence
• Improve professional diction to bolster credibility
• Group related contentions together to make arguments more coherent
• Control the tone of background statements to advance a client’s position
• Refine and coordinate argument headings to help ease judges into arguments
• Structure tables of contents to transparently reveal a brief’s logic
• Edit others’ drafts efficiently and without workplace friction, and
• Improve writing on your own

Sentence, Paragraph, Argument, Brief should appear on the syllabus of every legal writing course and on the shelf of every lawyer who wants to understand more deeply how good briefs help their clients win.

eBooks, CDs, downloadable content, and software purchases are noncancelable, nonrefundable and nonreturnable. Click here for more information about LexisNexis eBooks. The eBook versions of this title may feature links to Lexis+® service for further legal research options. A valid subscription to Lexis+ is required to access this content.