The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well

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Tom Goldstein. The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well

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THE LAWYER'S GUIDE

TO WRITING WELL

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Historical

Lawyers are conservative, innately cautious, and often do what was done before solely because it was done before. As Jacques Barzun suggested to us, lawyers use strings of synonyms out of habit. We all know that the hold of habit is strong, but it rarely justifies what we are doing. Justice Holmes once wrote in a different context, “It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.”18

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