by Marcus Wiseman
Being a lawyer is generally quite stressful, but it's an exciting job. However, the paperwork can be devastating. Yet still, creating high-quality legal documents can very well enhance the reputation of your firm.
It's not only general legal writing, but there is also a need for content writing in this age of technology. You need to write content on your firm's website to attract clients and get more business. Since that can be quite complicated, especially for a lawyer that may still have some trouble with regular legal writing, many firms decide to hire a law firm blog service.
Nevertheless, you should still know the ins and outs of writing a legal transcript, as it is imperative in your profession. That's why you should look over these five writing tips for becoming a better legal writer.
Avoid using any words, phrases, or sentences that don't add value. You may have read a lengthy article with over 1000 words, but only about half or a quarter of the material consisted of useful information. You must keep to the point, don't go off-topic, and try to relay your message as quickly as possible. After all, you don't want to keep the readers waiting for the information most beneficial to their situation.
You might be using many words while writing the article to sound sophisticated, but is that really what your audience wants? It's essential that you make the piece as simple as possible for a regular person to understand. As previously mentioned, using useless words that can take the reader's attention off the message is not good. Use easy to understand terms and common phrases that will keep your reader's attention invested, instead of them checking the dictionary every two seconds.
It would be best if you tried writing the article in an active voice. Using passive voice might confuse the reader, and it will also take more words to convey a shorter message. You can use an active voice to structure each sentence properly. It allows the subjects to perform the actions, instead of telling about the already executed actions without adequately identifying the subject.
There is a big difference between regular writing and legal writing, but one very similar thing is the use of powerful action words.
You should consider using dynamic words to give more meaning and life to an otherwise regular structure. It could be crucial to paint a simple but clear image of the story to the reader. However, you should still not use too many unnecessary words.
After completing the entire document, revise it several times. Properly proofreading each sentence to make sure everything is in order, is very important in writing and even more so in legal documents. Having misspelled words, grammatical errors, and other mistakes can lead to misunderstandings, or the reader might not take you seriously.
On the other hand, having a properly written article with the correct language can go a long way. You should not entirely rely on the auto-correct features of a word processor or the power of another correction software. Artificial things can be wrong or miss an error, which is why you need to edit manually
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