It’s Latin.
It’s legalese.
And it makes you go in slow-mo.

❌ “Assuming, arguendo, that the case is ripe for review, the plaintiff still lacks standing to bring it.”

Try “even if” instead.

(It’ll help you sound less dead.)

✅ “Even if the case were ripe for review, the plaintiff lacks standing to bring it.”

Verbs come in two types:

1: ACTION verbs—

These propel your reader forward by presenting action.

2: TO-BE verbs (also called, “state-of-being” verbs)—

These trap your reader in place by describing a static condition.

So I came up with this new framework: M-A-D-E

M = Master the material
A = Arrange the material
D = Draft the sections
E = Edit in stages

(This is for trial-court briefs.)

Here are the details:

📍 "based on"
📍 "as a result of"
📍 "for the reason that"
📍 "due to the fact that"
📍 "in light of the fact that"
📍 "on account of the fact that"

All these ways take a roundabout route to get to your point.

They're also clunky to read, and they add to your word count.

You should banish the word from your vocabulary—especially in a brief.

ORIG:        Plaintiff is clearly wrong.  👎

REV:         Plaintiff is wrong.  ✅

The second one lands harder.

It cuts out a full word and two syllables, and it sounds less stuffy and formulaic—

✏️ Change “pursuant to” to “under”:

ORIG:              Defendant brings this motion for summary judgment pursuant to Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

For the first time, Scribes’s best legal-writing essays since 1990 can be found all in one place:

“Gems from The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing: Volumes 1–20,” an anthology edited by Joe Kimble.

🔹 A word on the editor:

I've never met Joe Kimble. But his name has long been associated in my mind with the very best legal writing advice.

It’s memorable. It’s dramatic. It’s . . . technically flawed.

👉 Grammatically, the sentence says the bar exam died three times.

Why? Because of a dangling modifier.

(It also saves space--)

ORIG:       A reasonable jury could not find negligence on this evidence.

REV:         No reasonable jury could find negligence on this evidence.  ✅

That little word “no” changes the sentence’s whole tenor and flow.

(It makes a big difference.)

TBH, for years, I felt like a fraud from Bryan Garner’s advice to “write swiftly” (until I finally understood what he meant).

At the time, nothing about my brief-writing was “swift.”

Agonizing, yes.
Painstaking, true.
Laborious, always.

Greta (my baby, but now 23) just released her first album.

The title is “Baby Fat,” and it’s fantastic.

I hope you will check it out on Spotify.

So far, my favorite songs are “We Both Know,” “Sunshine,” and “Just My Luck!”

 ✏️  Instead of “is not required to,” use “need not.”

Examples:

Ex 1:      To prevail on its motion, the defendant is not required to disprove the plaintiffs’ claims.

Rev 1:    To prevail on its motion, the defendant need not disprove the plaintiffs’ claims.

All through June, I’d been in this awful limbo—
studying some, but not intensely—
with too much time left to go “all‑in,”
but not enough to relax.

The result?

A whole month ruined by self‑doubt, guilt, and truly elite‑level procrastination. If there had been medals, I definitely would have placed.

But this one brought me such delight.

So we noticed a small nest on a high shelf, right by our front door.

And day after day, we waited.

No activity.

So we started to think it was empty.

Deserted.

Blah:  “Thus, we decided to delay the deposition.”
New:  “We thus decided to delay the deposition.”  ✅
--
Blah: “Therefore, his counsel ceded to our demands.”
New:  “His counsel therefore ceded to our demands.”  ✅
--
Same words.
Same logic.