The Digital Age = Bad Legal Writing?
So sez this law.com article:
Achieving flow may be important, but Craig Jeffrey, an eighth-year associate in Bryan Cave's Chicago office, said that he needs to respond to the outside distractions that come his way when he is drafting contracts or memos.
"There's an expectation on the sender's side that I'm going to respond instantaneously," he said, adding that he has encountered co-workers who respond only to e-mail once an hour or at other designated times.
"I haven't been able to exercise that kind of restraint," said Jeffrey, who practices real estate and banking and public finance law.
In many ways, technology has improved writing skills, Romig said.
Word processing basics, such as spell-check, passive-voice detection and subject-verb disagreement prompters can make more time for "what's really hard about writing," she said.
Advances in legal research also have improved writing, she said. Before online research, Shepardizing a case, for example, required a trip to the library to page through creaky volumes.
But the use of electronic research can create problems, especially for beginners, she said. All cases in electronic form look basically alike, she said.
A student or new lawyer might find a case clearly on point, but without the benefit of actually seeing the case in print, and where it sits on the bookshelf, the researcher may neglect to notice that it is from the 1920s or from a nonbinding jurisdiction.
"There's an expectation on the sender's side that I'm going to respond instantaneously," he said, adding that he has encountered co-workers who respond only to e-mail once an hour or at other designated times.
"I haven't been able to exercise that kind of restraint," said Jeffrey, who practices real estate and banking and public finance law.
In many ways, technology has improved writing skills, Romig said.
Word processing basics, such as spell-check, passive-voice detection and subject-verb disagreement prompters can make more time for "what's really hard about writing," she said.
Advances in legal research also have improved writing, she said. Before online research, Shepardizing a case, for example, required a trip to the library to page through creaky volumes.
But the use of electronic research can create problems, especially for beginners, she said. All cases in electronic form look basically alike, she said.
A student or new lawyer might find a case clearly on point, but without the benefit of actually seeing the case in print, and where it sits on the bookshelf, the researcher may neglect to notice that it is from the 1920s or from a nonbinding jurisdiction.
"Holding the book reinforces the learning," she said.
I'm not terribly persuaded. [Ed.: says he who reads and links to the article without printing it out!]I agree that it's a bad habit to read or edit something without actually printing it out. And here, some modern day habits may result in corners being cut. (Tough to print out a case if you are working remotely from the coffee shop I suppose . . . .) But as a general rule, people who cut corners tend to do so no matter what. And those that don't. Don't. I don't think technology has much to do with it.
And the argument that our attention spans are constantly being tested because we are being bombarded with text messages and instant messages? Again, if we're looking to be distracted, there are many ways to be distracted. The three martini lunch I'm sure didn't help fine tune many briefs.
I do agree that the habit of not seeing stuff in print is something that tends to result in careless errors, and this is something which should be avoided. But I think most people recognize this and avoid it. I also agree that sometimes researching is better accomplished by leafing through a treatise rather than trying out many online searches and hoping you chance upon the general vicinity of what you are looking for.
Overall, there are many ways in which the internet helps produce a better written product. Word usage, for example is something I look up right away when drafting a document. (Of course you can run into problems relying on google, but there are some more reliable sources out there.) I tend to think my usage errors have decreased for the most part as a result of being able to look up something online right away.
Me, I'll take an internet connection and a word processor/pdf program any day of the week. Have fun with your bound books and your typewriter! (These folks who lament the effects of modern technology on writing quality probably think that blogs don't add much to the research/writing process either. . . .)
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