For most of my life, I avoided “affect” as a verb.

I would use “impact,” or just change the sentence around to avoid the decision.

But the verb “to impact” doesn’t really mean “to affect.” (To impact” means to hit with force, or to jolt.) And sometimes my sentence-rearranging would be awkward.

Dear Legal Writer: Every year in BigLaw (except perhaps 2009), there was a fresh crop of first-year associates. You could feel the buzz of beginnings in the air on Day 1. There was nervous energy & excitement, and they brought a powerful injection of energy and enthusiasm into our department. 🛑 BUT . . .

There was one serious mistake they’d all always make.

Dear Legal Writer: It’s a mistake to short shrift your Table of Contents (TOC).

The TOC may be the most important part of your brief.

🔶 It’s likely the very first thing a court will read, and that makes it prime real estate for starting to persuade.

✅ A, B, and C -YES

❌ A, B and C -NO

✅ A, B & C -YES

❌ A, B, & C -NO

***
RULE: DO use a comma before “and” in a list of 3 or more.

Please stop referring to the “company” as “they.”

The “company” is an “it,” not a “they.”

If you have doubts, below is a short explanation, along with a query for international peeps:

**
In U.S. English:

By the time I graduated law school, I had had enough of men.

I moved states, bought my own apartment in NYC, and set out to start my life as an independent “career woman.”

(That is what we called women who didn’t marry and just had careers back then, in 1996.)

Dear Legal Writer: If I told you to minimize “expletives” in your legal writing to help you cut words, you might retort, “I would never use expletives in legal writing.”

Alas, but you do.

Here’s what I mean:

🔹 Definition:

Dear Legal Writer: Put a period or comma INSIDE the ending quotation marks, regardless of whether the period or comma appeared in the original, quoted material.

Scope: U.S. Legal Writing*

Here are two examples.

1️⃣ NO COMMA IN ORIGINAL

Dear 1L, Too many of you are capitalizing the word “court” when you shouldn't, and not capitalizing it when you should.

Learn the rules governing court capitalization now, and you’ll never need to think about the topic again.

RULES

Dear Legal Writer: Be careful with the word “find.”

In fact, if you’re writing a motion for summary judgment or an appellate brief, don’t use “find” at all.

🔹 An appellate court doesn’t “find” anything. It renders conclusions of law, not fact.

Dear Legal Writer, If you want a quick read that’s chock-full of info & advice on written & oral advocacy, I recommend:

“Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges,” by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the well-known, legal-writing scholar, Bryan A. Garner (“MYC”).

If you work your way up through the BigLaw associate ranks like I did, eventually you face a time of reckoning. The only question becomes:

⁉️ Do you have a book of business? ⁉️

You may even awake one cold day to the stark reality that even though you’ve done a superlative job as an associate, there is only up, out, or, in select cases, on indefinite “hold.”

Today I write about a writing question I just faced: Should you capitalize the word that comes after a colon (“:”)?

In other words, should the “should” in the preceding sentence be capitalized?

Answer: I’ve found no legal-writing style guide on the topic. Under non-legal, writing-style guides, the answer is inconsistent.

Conventional wisdom says the best way to become a better writer is to read a lot of good writing. That may be true, but I find it impractical for too many.

What percentage of lawyers and law students have daily free time to read significant additional writing, “good” or otherwise?