We save your clients money, and enable you to earn more. It costs you nothing ... except a little advance planning. Managing your way to great legal writing includes securing appropriate assistance. Probizwriters delivers legal writing and editing solutions, and some relief. How? Our reasonable hourly rates reduce your clients' legal fees, while positively impacting your bottom line by saving you precious time to engage in other billable activities.
Lawyers Need Editors Too!
The power and punch of legal documents turn on two things … substance and writing quality. If you don't communicate clearly, you're crippled as a lawyer. While you can’t control the facts or the law, you can govern your writing.
Our expert legal editors collaborate confidentially (in the background) with time-constrained private practitioners,lawyers at multinational law firms, and even judges. Our editing (which can be brutal) saves time and makes legal practioners look as sharp as possible on paper. With well-organized, grammatically-perfect presentations, clients, judges, and other audiences are impressed. Senior partners look good, and so do associates.
With limited time, writing suffers among busy professionals. Lawyers frequently find they could use more time and fewer distractions to improve serious writing projects. While most lawyers realize this, they're not sure how to best manage their legal writing and editing. Others are in denial or aren't mindful of their writing.
Lawyers commonly suffer some bad writing habits, rooted in their history as orators, including:
Notorious verbosity
Failure to use the active voice
Too exhaustive—failure to limit and prioritize arguments
Too convoluted—failure to keep the audience focused and interested
Short-circuit editing
Use of hyperbole
Asking rhetorical questions
Burying the point - failure to simplify points before getting to the complexity
Forcing readers to struggle to understand
Use of legalese and archaic terms
To overcome these problems, smart lawyers have great legal editors.
Legal Documents we Edit Include —
Inter-Office and Research Memoranda
Client Communication and Newsletters
Trial and Appellate Briefs and Memoranda
Pleadings
All Business Documents
Contracts
Books, Guides, Practice Manuals
Law Review and Scholarly Articles
Lawyering today is highly competitive, and lawyers who compete wisely make the best use of their time and talents and leverage strategic support services. They see the value of improving the written quality of their service. They regularly address the questions below to stay on top of their writing. How do you answer them?
o Do we write case-winning briefs that shine? Effective Writing has to be part of the trial strategy. For litigators written communication determines
whether they win or lose.
o Do we eliminate cumbersome language from overused form documents? Is your legal writing too wordy and too convoluted? Does it interfere
with your ability to persuade?
o Are our contracts drafted cleanly and clearly, or do they confuse and aggravate clients?
o Do our letters talk down to clients, or sound robotic?
o Do we avoid sloppy, unfinished submissions, or do we run out of time?
o Does our writing product rise to the best standards of our professional peers?
o Are associates making the right impression on the firm's senior attorneys?
o Do we strive to adopt "plain-language" or "plain-English" methods and modify document templates?
o Are our litigators' briefs too long … exhausting impatient judges?
o Do our clients have trouble understanding our writing?
What Two Things can Lawyers do to Improve their Writing?
One, hire a good editor.
Lawyers are under so much pressure that half the time they’re not even thinking clearly. Plus it’s just good personal practice management to have an editor. Do you take pride in your work? Do you want to be a really good lawyer. Hire an exceptionally good editor and improve your written work product.
Two, commit to studying and practicing great writing. Read great legal writing by other lawyers. If you're a judge read great legal writing by other judges. If you're not a judge, don't try to write like judge. Good legal writing varies from one genre to another.
While legal writing courses are available to all professionals, applying those lessons consistently also takes time and focus, luxuries that many lawyers just don’t have. There are many, many resources out there aimed at helping lawyers improve their legal writing. Some of the books we use and recommend are listed below and on our book resources page.
Who Benefits from Legal Editing?
Despite the available books and courses on legal writing and plain language writing, most lawyers have too many demands on their time to refine and perfect these important writing skills. Yet, to look and perform your best, your written work product has to be top notch. That’s what clients expect, that’s what judges and others reviewing your work expect, and it’s how great lawyers distinguish themselves from the mediocre.
Expert editorial services are particularly appropriate for firm associates who want to demonstrate their abilities to, and make a strong impression on, clients and senior partners. These associates know the value of their time—and that how they look on paper is career-critical.
Expert editorial services are also appropriate for private practitioners who want to measure up to their big firm brethren, but are spread too thin to produce the quality writing they know is needed.
Top-notch lawyers use expert legal editors to polish their work, not because they can’t do it themselves, but because they know they won’t get it done timely or properly while fighting day-to-day law practice battles.
Editing Your own Legal Writing is about as Smart as Representing Yourself in Court!
Lawyers Are Great at Being Lawyers. But they don’t always have the time or focus to be expert writers or editors. Even great legal writers often don’t have the time to do their best work or finish the editorial process the way they’d like.
When it comes to writing, many lawyers think that they have to do it all themselves. As highly trained and educated professionals, they view their writing skills as top-of-the-line.
But all writers get bogged down in their own prose—it’s an unavoidable part of the process. Because writers know what they’re trying to say, they can miss what isn’t clear because it’s already clear to them. They tend to fall in love with it, and resist changing it.
While a little counterintuitive, legal writers need someone who doesn’t know what they’re trying to say to ensure that it’s delivered effectively.
A good editor brings a “fresh look” because, unlike the writer, the editor’s lack of familiarity raises questions. Editors are on the outside looking in, their focus on the writing and presentation itself adds fresh perspective and reveals what the writer overlooks.
This is why even the best legal writers, even those with sufficient time to write, know they need good editors—someone else to give it the objective editorial eye they can’t give it.
Accomplish More — Leave your Legal Editing to Probizwriters
That’s where Probizwriters comes in. We’ll save you time, improve your bottom line, and help you get the most out of your legal writing.
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