Point Taken: How to Write Like the World's Best Judges

by Ross Guberman

In Point Taken, Ross Guberman delves into the work of the best judicial opinion-writers and offers a step-by-step method based on practical and provocative examples. Featuring numerous cases and opinions from 34 esteemed judges - from Learned Hand to Antonin Scalia - Point Taken, explores what it takes to turn "great judicial writing" into "great writing". Guberman provides a system for crafting effective and efficient openings to set the stage, covering the pros and cons of whether to resolve legal issues up front and whether to sacrifice taut syllogistic openings in the name of richness and nuance. Guberman offers strategies for pruning clutter, adding background, emphasizing key points, adopting a narrative voice, and guiding the reader through visual cues. The structure and flow of the legal analysis is targeted through a host of techniques for organizing the discussion at the macro level, using headings, marshaling authorities, including or avoiding footnotes, and finessing transitions. Guberman shares his style "Must Haves", a bounty of edits at the word and sentence level that add punch and interest, and that make opinions more vivid, varied, confident, and enjoyable. He also outlines his style "Nice to Haves", metaphors, similes, examples, analogies, allusions, and rhetorical figures. Finally, he addresses the thorny problem of dissents, extracting the best practices for dissents based on facts, doctrine, or policy. The appendix provides a helpful checklist of practice pointers along with biographies of the 34 featured judges.

Genres: Law, Writing, Reference, Legal, Nonfiction

376 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 3, 2015

Reviews

[Luke Miller]

Not only does this book organize itself in a way that is easy to read as if it was a novel, but it’s easy to go back and reference. Guberman is clever and uses terrific examples that illustrate his points.

[he]

I consider myself a Guberite (a follower of Guberman).

[Mary Warner]

For me, the biggest takeaway from this book is that good writing is good writing, no matter which field you're in. This book shows good writing in the legal field by providing snippets of legal briefs. I found some of these snippets hard to follow because there wasn't enough context, but I've learned that good lawyers are often very good writers. Chief Justice John Roberts and the late, great Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Both excellent writers.

[Karl Worsham]

I wish I had found this book before starting my clerkship. I am very glad I read it, and I plan to keep it next to my keyboard for easy reference going forward.

[Alex MacFarlan]

wonderfully curated collection of judicial writing well organized to help train a new law clerk or any new attorney in the best of writing.

[Laura]

Pretty good primer on writing -- or at least, editing -- court opinions. Does what it says on the tin--offers practical advice at delivering accessible opinions. Some good examples of powerful openings, dovetailing, good transitions, and avoiding deadening phrases. I like that Guberman condemns moreover, inter alia, pursuant to, and extraneous details.

It wasn't a great book. The examples skewed heavily to federal courts and federalists, which got tiresome. It also managed to be both glib and pedantic at times. I suspect Guberman is great at connecting at a crowd at a conference but some of that didn't translate all that well to text.

I wouldn't recommend it to a judge, but law clerks could learn a thing or two about not exalting legal jargon over plain English.

[Phoebe]

This is an informative book about legal writing. The author carefully picks and closely studies judgments written by both English and American judges. He also provides useful advice and succinct summaries of what makes a good legal judgment. I not only learnt how to present legal arguments in various fashions, but also learnt how to read and analyse them.