“Is comprised by” is always wrong.

Here’s why. ⤵️

“To comprise” = “to contain,” “to consist of,” “to be composed of.”

✅ All these sentences are correct:

-The whole contains its parts.

Dear Legal Writer:

My friend, Min Cho, suggested that I write about “i.e.” and “e.g.”  To begin, please know that unless you’re a Latin scholar, getting these correct is not intuitive.

Both abbreviations get used a lot in legal writing, so you’ll want to make sure you learn and can use them.

Here’s a short guide.  ⤵️

Dear Legal Writer:

“Prior to” is NOT a good synonym for “before” in legal writing.

It’s stiff.
It’s stilted.
It’s stuffy.

🔻 “Prior to” will not make you sound smarter than “before.”

Dear Matt,

Marrying you was the best decision I ever made.

What an extraordinary life journey we’ve had together.

Happy, happy 25th Anniversary—

I am so excited for another 25, and more!

Dear Legal Writer:

Before you use your next em-dash, make sure you know what you’re doing.

📍 Apparently, almost no 1Ls have been taught how to use an em-dash.

📍 I haven’t seen a law student use an em-dash properly in any of the writing samples I’ve reviewed these past 3 years.

— Wait, what’s that you say?

🔺 “Since” has been a good synonym for “because” since time immemorial?

🔺 And “since” is a full syllable shorter, it has 2 fewer letters, and it sounds so much better than “because,” so you love to use it?

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