Plain English for Lawyers

by Richard C. Wydick

Now in its fourth edition, Wydick's book stands the test of time. With its affordable price, this book is the most cost-effective teaching tool available to legal writing instructors. It teaches the legal profession how to learn and practice basic techniques of good writing through examples from briefs, statutes, and other legal writings. It also provides practical exercises so that readers may try out their new-found insights. The fourth edition includes a subsection on syntactic ambiguity and a subsection with ideas for drafting statutes, rules, and other formal documents, as well as updated endnotes and many new exercises.

Plain English for Lawyers has proven itself to be one of the most essential tools for law students and practicing lawyers alike, and Wydick's humorous demonstrations of legalese endear this book to both students and faculty.

Genres: Law, Writing, Reference, Nonfiction, Legal, Language

173 pages, Paperback

Reviews

[Hirdesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

review to come.

[Grace Wilson🦧 · Rating 5 out of 5]

HOT TAKE??
I understand this has such low ratings because it’s obviously a book they have to read for school but my professor made us do all the exercises and I can’t tell you how much they have helped me. This has taught me to synthesize my writing, cut down on unnecessary words and truly get to the fucking point. I will keep this as a note for when I continue on my legal writing journey. Truly make me confident that I could be a lawyer (or at least write like one)

[Salem Lorot · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that you will always find listed in the bibliography of nearly every other legislative drafting book. When you finally read it, you realize why. Wydick breaks it down plainly, educating you on how well you can communicate in plain language. Lawyers are used to legalese. This book is one that teaches them to unlearn this. Wydick does an exemplary work.

[Alan A · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's going to get boring. Even when the author attempts to write some humorous comments to catch your attention. But is this actually useful? Yes.

From my professor: "Just write less and show more. I don't want to read useless words. Give it to me straight." Seems pretty self-evident when communicating. But now raise that pillar to the point that your legal writings are now going to affect real people in real life. So... that's pretty useful to know.

[Mackenzie Young Mattingly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do I know English?

Who knows.

Was this incredibly dry?

This I do know.

[Alison Vaughan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was forced to read this against my will.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear, concise, and practical. The book is well written for a book on straight grammar and punctuation. It cleverly displays and follows its own rules. The exercises are excellent for evaluating your understanding and engraving the knowledge in your mind.

This is what a practical book on writing should be at a minimum: It's not art, but it is efficient, useful, and clever.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was hilarious. Which you probably don't think of law school books being but it was. Comparing semi-colons to poisonous mushrooms and lots of name calling words and phrases. It was delightful. I feel like this will be a good reference book throughout the years but I am glad I read it first and got a little more familiar with it. Fun book.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and sweet, easy enough to follow along (I read over several days when I had 10-15 minutes of free time). The exercises were useful and didn't require a substantial time commitment.
I think this is something 1Ls should be required to read, and a good amount of legal writing instructors: particularly those over 40 or 45.

[Michael Goodine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stereotype of the lawyer who writes incomprehensible gibberish is fading away, but it is always a good idea to review the basics of good writing.

This book covers the same ground as Joseph Williams' wonderful "Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace". Get that one if you want more of the same.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great resource for anyone in the legal field, or anyone that wants to improve the way they do written communication! It is definitely a quick book to read through but a greater book to have on your shelf as a reference source.

[Peachy Keen · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, don't buy it (or not on Amazon, where the prices are absurd for how old and how short the book is). You can find it easily in libraries. So far it's probably my favorite book for learning writing style as far as individual sentences or groups of sentences (he doesn't really get into issues of organizing them into a cohesive whole, like a report or essay).

Each book I've read about how to write well has some limitations, and so far I've gotten the most usefulness from reading many. It's hard to write about how to write: it's easy to forget things that are important if they're second-nature to a person, and it's tempting to cover the same ground everyone else covers, lest you look like a hack. This book may do the first, but really it just leaves much to the side because it is addressing a specific audience and the common problems in legal writing (which happen to be problems elsewhere too).

It is concise and easy to read. I first read it in college and spent maybe 1-2 days working through the book (the exercises are helpful); if a person hasn't ever worked through such a book before, it might take more like 3-5 days.

[Blake Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

What's great about this literature guide is that there are exercises with answers to improve comprehension. I learned about how often lawyers don't use the oxford comma(infuriating). Professional papers use ellipses to indicate an omission in the quote/text and that indirect questions/commands receive a period as punctuation, no matter how kind they are. For example: "Will you please ever so kindly send the memorandum tomorrow please." or "Can you go get me the remote." or the worst of all the indirect questions(questions that do not begin with what, when where, why, or how: "Can you name who was the 18th president was." and this makes me mad, but it's how our legislators and lawyers dictate bills.

[Aaron Brand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple and straightforward. This book reminds the lawyer that it is his audience who matters most, not his ego. I haven't dusted this off since law school, but the sample exercises for each section, along with the numerous examples within the chapter, will help any lawyer write more plainly, and thus, more clearly.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful little book. He has rules about commas and possessives and also general tips on better legal writing. It was tongue-in-cheek at times. The instructions for the exercises should have been clearer; they build on each other as opposed to focusing on that chapter’s lesson.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find myself perturbed that the section on proper formatting has a paragraph without a starting indent. Additionally, the section about plurals being created by " 's " clearly was not proofread, as the 's was consistently added to the preceding word.

[Jill Spampinato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to read this for my Writing in Criminal Justice Course, and it was really great. Very easy to follow along and had lots of examples. The author was also really funny! Not what you’d expect with a book like this.

[Sav · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know why it is getting a bad rap, but I think this is a good reference to keep around as a law student.

Although legalese works in communication between lawyers, we have to be careful about using this type of language with non-lawyers.

[The Literary Jedi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spouses' coursework textbook

[Mabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy read hence the book truly encapsulates the main lesson of not writing an arcane and verbose essay.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, a very good resource for attorneys.

[Susu Almusawi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simple grammar and punctuation refresher. Very helpful.

[Hannah]

For work.

If you haven’t picked up a grammar writing style book in a while this would be helpful.

[Matthew Bong · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this for school need to update my goodreads 😭

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The catalyst for a complete restructuring of my sentence compositions.

[Jacob Gash-Karpowich · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I read this at the firm does it count as work?

[Ben Monks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t like this one too picky about its rules and opinions, however good idea to remind lawyers to chill out with their language

[Bruna Rocha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! Although it's aimed at lawyers, I think it'd be useful to anyone who needs to write in English. There are exercises after each topic so that you can put what you've read into practice. Highly recommend it!

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contrary to my reading stats this is a quick read. The problem is the last couple of exercises were very long, so it took me a while to get around to them.

Writers on legal style tend to emphasize a series of "grammar rules" -- many of which are preferences rather than rules and many of which are just basic writing. The really, really hard part about legal writing is not that writers are jerks who like to sound musty, but that the writer has to work very hard to understand what he or she is writing about and sometimes does not. Now if that could be solved, all the style questions would slowly fall away with books like this. Of course, it's also true that there wouldn't be much left to lawyerin'.

[Sharif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Wydick's concise book should be required reading for lawyers. If your own unique brand of professional deformation has you using words like "utilize" and "proactive" on a weekly basis, read "Plain English for Lawyers". It's a great way to turn yourself upside down and shake all the surplus verbiage out of your writing (if not your brain).