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The Elements of Legal Style
by: Bryan A. Garner

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.06634
EAN: 9780195141627
ISBN: 0195141628
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: March 21, 2002
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Sales Rank: 24841
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
With expanded coverage in this new edition, The Elements of Legal Style features additional sections, many more examples, and a thoroughly researched appendix that contains 80 major statements on prose style--what it is and how to attain it. Inspired by Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, this book clearly (often wittily) explains the full range of what legal writers need to know: mechanics, word choice, structure, and rhetoric, as well as all the special conventions that legal writers should follow in using headings, defined terms, quotations, and many other devices. Garner also provides abundant examples from the best legal writers of yesterday and today, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Clarence Darrow, Frank Easterbrook, and Antonin Scalia.
If you want to make your writing clearer, more precise, more persuasive, and above all more stylish, The Elements of Legal Style offers the surest--and the most enjoyable--means to that end.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Like HAL 9000 addressing the Harvard Club
This book gets a 5/5 for substance but a 1/5 for style.

To be fair, the writer of any book about writing has the heightened duties of the bomb-disposal technician or the internal affairs detective. Garner is fastidious to a fault and, given his audience, this is understandable. But the final product sounds like William F. Buckley, Jr. reading the phone book through Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer. This is not boring, but distractingly awkward. I found myself paying more attention to the author's ecclectic phrase choices and mincing composition than his message. Garner weighs the advantanges of the spare "Attic" style of writing (Holmes) against the florid "asiatic" style (Cardozo), then somehow manages to adopt the worst of both of them.

(And did he really just say "asiatic?")

As a member and fan of the "California" school of legal writing (Kozinski) and rhetoric ... Read More

Rating:

- Not just for lawyers
I am a physician who tested out of all college English to focus on science. Writing chart notes, scientific articles, or even parts of textbooks does not prepare one for the type of writing one must do when performing legal work.

Scientific-technical writing, legal writing, or the best-selling novel all require different writing styles. Mr. Garner's book must be a help to law students based on other reviews but importantly to me; it is very accessable to those who have never attended law school.

Legal style is a "style" that is important in the profession of law. If you do any work in this area at all, whether it is on the stand or writing essays, it behooves the non-lawyer to read this book. So, even though I agree with the glowing reviews from lawyers, this book may be even more important to those of us who must do legal work but have never been to law school.

Rating:

- Shockingly good
In short, this is the first and only style guide that I have ever been excited to continue reading and share with others. It has really improved my writing.

Rating:

- For those who wish to reach beyond the stars.
First introduced to Bryan A. Garner at one of his brief writing seminar, several years ago, I have since been a loyal reader of his works.

This book is (1) a reference book, (2) an invaluable resource, (3) more than just a grammar or style book ever thought of being, (4) chocked full of historical information and legal literary quotes, (5) presented in a humorous and accessible manner, and (6) the standard to which all legal writers should aspire.

Poor writing and the use of legalese have always been bug-a-boos of mine. And, over the lifetime of my legal practice, having to slave over thousands of statutes, briefs, decisions, motions, etc., has only intensified my belief that too few lawyers know how to write well, and that the legal profession should abolish the use of legalese from the practice of law.

In Mr. Garner, I have found a champion. In "The Elements of Legal Style", writers ... Read More

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