language hat reports that the New York Times had an article on this on March 4th (see earlier entry). (That NYT link should be a keeper)
The article went a bit further. It consulted Brian Garner
bq. Bryan A. Garner, the editor of Black’s Law Dictionary and the president of LawProse, a legal-writing consulting firm, said courts are becoming increasingly impatient with many lawyers’ substandard writing skills.
“Lawyers are the most highly paid professional writers in the world,” he said. “It’s a good thing for judges to be more demanding.”
and it found another story. A Utah appeals court, on the same day as the Hart decision mentioned above, criticized a lawyer for ‘shouting’.
bq. “While I appreciate a zealous advocate as much as anyone, such techniques, which really amount to a written form of shouting, are simply inappropriate in an appellate brief,” Judge Orme continued. “It is counterproductive for counsel to litter his brief with burdensome material such as “WRONG! WRONG ANALYSIS! WRONG RESULT! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”
Well, some inactive Eng. judges could try to keep awake stop during trial to forestall an appeal for sleep-talk, calling themselves consumers who want one-page ‘skeleton arguments’ dished up to them on a diskette and letting winning Counsel draft judgement for them in a High Court Minute of Order that is just rubber-stamped before being entered.
Some also also have younger lawyers called judicial assistants to do the reading of case-papers for them.
Also the book Risiko! Anwalt! written by a Freie Berlin Uni. Law Prof. doesn’t think much of some German (applies equally to UK) lawyers’ drafting skills: mis-spelt (mis-spelled…) briefs/ pleadings mixing up the parties, claiming the wrong relief at the wrong address and overlooking time limits.
That’s Uwe Wesel. It’s been a while since I read (part of) it.
Congrats on spotting the author. Pity you didn’t read all of it. It should be – yet more – recommended reading for all German law students as to what happens in practice – im ‘realexisterenden Fachchinesisch’.
I’m very fond of Fast Alles, Was Recht Ist – I haven’t seen the later editions, but Wesel is very well known in Germany.