Thank you for teaching me about lawyer stuff. Probably I might become a lawyer after I retire from making movies.
Thank you Wayne Schiess. It was cool listening to how you wrote laws. Thank you. P.S. Are you going to be here next year?
I would like to thank you for all the work you gave us. Now I feel more smart.
Young Authors Conference was sooooo much fun doing it with you. I liked it a lot. Thank you for doing so much. You were funny. I liked you a lot. I enjoyed it a lot.
Thank you for teaching me about legal writing and about laws and what they do. P.S. Thank you for coming, and it was not boring.
Prior and subsequent: "Before" and "after" are perfectly good words. Use them instead.
Previous: Worse than "prior."
Contemporaneously: Worse than "previous." "At the same time" is understood instantly.
Have occasion to: Needless clutter that often follows "did you . . . ?" Don't use it.
With respect to: An awkward way to say "about" or "concerning."
. . .
Initiate: "Start" is a perfectly good word. Use it instead.
. . .
Observe and perceive: "See" and "hear" almost always do a better job.
. . .
Indicate: "Show" and "tell" are better words. Use one of them instead.
Relate: Too fancy. "Tell" does a much better job.
Is it appropriate to raise new facts in an argument section (with citation to the record) that you did not cite in the Statement of Facts? Sometimes, facts that I want to raise in the argument don't fit well within the Statement of Facts. They either make the Statement of Facts long and clumsy or just seem out of place / distract from the narrative but are useful in the context of the argument.I hope practitioners will chime in with comments, but I can tell you that the stock answer for my first-year brief-writing course is no. Don't mention a fact for the first time in the argument. Any fact you mention in the argument should have been mentioned first in the facts section.
I think the UCC provision is perfectly clear. This made-up distinction between which and that is a lie and doesn't really exist. If I recall correctly, the British use which and that interchangeably.But I say that although failing to distinguish between that and which rarely results in genuine ambiguity, it can create ambiguity and occasionally does. So it's worth observing the distinction. For example:
a. New water law was needed in the western states--all of whom rely on irrigation for farming.To me, it is a genuine ambiguity, and it would disappear if the writer could distinguish between that and which. Like this:
b. New water law was needed only in those western states relying on irrigation for farming.
a. A new body of water law was needed in the western states, which relied on irrigation for farming.That's my position. The examples are from Douglas Laycock, That and Which, 2 Scribes Journal of Legal Writing 37 (1991).
b. A new body of water law was needed in the western states that relied on irrigation for farming.
Where the buyer has accepted goods and given notification (subsection (3) of Section 2-607) he may recover as damages for any non-conformity of tender the loss resulting in the ordinary course of events from the seller's breach as determined in any manner which is reasonable.Excuse me, but I think the drafters intended "is reasonable" to restrict "any manner," as in:
Where the buyer has accepted goods and given notification (subsection (3) of Section 2-607) he may recover as damages for any non-conformity of tender the loss resulting in the ordinary course of events from the seller's breach as determined in any manner that is reasonable.Or even better:
Where the buyer has accepted goods and given notification (subsection (3) of Section 2-607) he may recover as damages for any non-conformity of tender the loss resulting in the ordinary course of events from the seller's breach as determined in any reasonable manner.