An example from my workshop

While concise sentences hold the judge’s attention, long-winded ones lull them to sleep — especially if the sentence relies on worn-out incantations to carry its meaning.

In my online writing workshops, attorneys from around the world independently revise anonymized examples from real legal filings, then discuss the original’s problems along with the solutions we found.

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Here is a sentence that generated an interesting discussion at my most recent Concision and Plain Language workshop. It’s from an attorney’s meet-and-confer declaration:1

“Attached hereto as Exhibit ‘A’ is a true and correct copy of my March 22, 2019 ‘meet and confer’ letter addressed to counsel for Plaintiff in the instant action pertaining to the instant motion in limine.”

That’s a bloated sentence packed with legalese. Legalistic jargon and ritual phrases become habits because lawyers tend to reproduce writing patterns used by other lawyers without pausing to consider whether these are the most clear, straightforward, and artful way to convey meaning.

I revised the “Attached hereto” sentence as follows:

Exhibit A is my March 22 meet-and-confer letter to Plaintiff’s counsel.

That structure works well if the declaration is functioning as an index, with each line beginning “Exhibit X is ....” But the best revision came from a participant:

I sent Plaintiff’s counsel a meet-and-confer letter about this motion on March 22 (Exhibit A).

This version restructures the sentence to show a character performing an action (Elegant Legal Writing § 4.4), replacing the static verb is with the action verb send.

Here’s an (inexhaustive) analysis of problems with the original:

1. “Attached hereto is ….” “Hereto” is quintessential legalese; it’s also contextually redundant, since the reader will expect that any attachment mentioned in a declaration is attached to that declaration rather than some other document. The sentence’s structure also violates the reader’s expectations; the sentence describes a document as “attached” before identifying the document, reversing the usual subject-verb or topic-predicate sentence structure and lending the sentence an archaic flavor.

2. “A true and correct copy of.” “True” and “correct” mean the same thing here, so this pair is a doublet. A doublet is a pair of redundant synonyms, used reflexively as a cliché without attending to the words’ meanings (ELW § 2.4). Consider describing the exhibit while leaving implicit that it’s authentic and a copy, since both assertions are contextually redundant; an attorney attests that a document is authentic just by telling the court what it is in a declaration based on personal knowledge.2

3. “In the instant action.” Still more redundant legalese. “The above-entitled matter,” “the above-captioned case,” and similar phrases are equally bad. “Here” is better, but it too is often dispensable. Unless context suggests otherwise, a litigation filing is presumed to be referring to the case in which it’s filed.

4. “Addressed to counsel for Plaintiff.” “Addressed to” is a longwinded way to say “to.” “Counsel for Plaintiff” should be revised to “Plaintiff’s counsel” (ELW § 4.7).

A well-crafted brief is approachable in length and style, encouraging the judge to pick it up and read it straight through. Concise writing reassures the judge that every paragraph contains information that will help them do their job.

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Attorneys and legal-writing aficionados from around the world join me for ninety-minute sessions reworking passages and discussing the nuances of great legal writing in my online workshops. Subscribe to this blog to learn about new ones. Each session uses fresh examples so people can return as often as they like. The reviews have been uniformly positive:

“The workshop was a great experience. Small-group sessions like these are highly beneficial. The personal interaction and feedback are invaluable.”

— Steven Sciple

“The workshop was great! I loved it. I was really grateful for you sharing your firm’s example briefs, recommending books, and for being so willing to answer questions. It was also really fun getting to be around a bunch of legal writing nerds!”

— Workshop participant

I hope you can join us:

Register: Concision — Sept. 24

Register: Strong Sentences — Oct. 1

Register: Concision — Oct. 8

I worry about how AI will affect education, art, and culture. Those reservations, however, do not stop me from using frontier AI models every day, usually in ways that don’t occur to other attorneys. AI can enhance productivity if you use it safely and effectively. That begins with staying committed to the everyday thinking and learning, reading and writing, and professional at-bats (depositions, mediations, oral arguments, trials, and the like) that slowly build deep expertise while giving clients the benefit of our best human thinking and professional judgment.

Earlier this year, I gave a talk at the University of Oklahoma College of Law about AI and legal writing, where I shared three ground rules for using AI in legal practice. AI can make you a better attorney if and only if you honor these:

1. Take extra precautions to ensure that your work is accurate. Attorneys are ethically responsible for what they say and write. This has always been true, including long before generative AI was invented. For example, attorneys cannot rubber-stamp filings prepared by inexperienced assistants, rely on a summer associate’s research memo without checking its reasoning and conclusions, quote something secondhand without checking and citing the original source, assume that cited cases remain good law, and so on.
   
   Attorneys cannot delegate their ethical duties of competence and candor to an AI service any more than they could delegate them to a human assistant. Every significant legal and factual representation in a court filing must be checked, and the attorneys who sign legal briefs are always accountable for what they contain no matter how it got there.
   
   Don’t assume that integrating AI into your workflows allows you to do less manual review before filing a brief. On the contrary, using AI requires more manual review. One AI-related blunder, such as a hallucinated citation, can destroy your reputation.

2. Do your own thinking and writing. Use AI as an assistant, not as a substitute for your own thinking and writing. Most legal analysis is performed through the writing process. We learn and problem-solve by and through the act of writing. Sitting still with a blank page, and working to corral and organize one’s thoughts so they can be communicated effectively, is central to what great writers do, and the same is true for litigation attorneys.
   
   Using AI as a shortcut to do core reading and writing tasks can spare you labor, but the cost is too steep. Whatever creative ideas you would have arrived at through the traditional writing process will never occur to you, you won’t have the sense of ownership and understanding that comes with doing the work yourself, and your advocacy will suffer.
   

3. Never try to pass off AI-generated text as authentic communication. AI prose is usually competent but shallow and mediocre, riddled with jargon and syntactic clichés. AI services can convey information in fluent, polished prose that is free of grammatical errors. But there is a difference between prose that is merely polished and prose that is compelling, that has a distinct style and voice capable of stirring and edifying those who read it, that can earn and deserve the attention of discerning human readers.
   
   AI services’ imitations of human writing are often less impressive than they seem. The more knowledgeable a reader is on a topic, the more likely it is that they will find mistakes in AI-generated prose, and the less likely they are to find the text interesting or worthwhile.

Register for AI Workflows (9/17)

Register for AI Workflows (10/15)

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Ryan McCarl is a founding partner of business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more writing tips, join one of Ryan’s writing workshops, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog, and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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Ryan McCarl, litigation attorney and author of Elegant Legal Writing, hosts events on legal writing, argumentation, and AI. All events begin at noon Pacific (3 p.m. Eastern) and are held live online through Zoom. Participants leave with a handout describing the techniques covered:

September 17 — AI Workflows for Lawyers (Presentation)
60-minute presentation and Q&A · $99 ($50 off)
Register for September 17 | More info

September 24 — Concision and Plain Language (Workshop)
90-minute workshop · $145 · 20-participant cap
Register for September 24 | More info

October 1 — Strong Sentences (Workshop)
90-minute workshop · $145 · 20-participant cap
Register for October 1 | More info

October 8 — Concision and Plain Language (Workshop)
90-minute workshop · $145 · 20-participant cap
Register for October 8 | More info

October 15 — AI Workflows for Lawyers (Presentation)
60-minute presentation and Q&A · $149
Register for October 15 | More info

McCarl regularly gives presentations to audiences of judges, law firms, and government agencies. Before co-founding Rushing McCarl LLP, he taught advanced legal writing and served as an AI Law and Policy research fellow at UCLA Law.

Workshops focus mainly on live writing exercises along with teaching explanations and Q&A. They are participatory — though passive attendance with microphone and camera off is fine — and limited to small groups to allow real-time feedback. Presentations use a live lecture-and-demonstration format and Q&A.

Legal AI

AI Workflows for Lawyers (Presentation)

Dates: Thursday, September 17, 2026; Thursday, October 15, 2026
Time: Noon–1 p.m. Pacific (3:00–4:00 p.m. Eastern)
Format: Live presentation and Q&A on Zoom, not recorded
Rates: September 17 — $99 (pilot-presentation rate); October 15 — $149

I’ll show you legal-AI workflows you haven’t seen before — ones requiring no software beyond a subscription to Claude or ChatGPT. I use AI to dictate document revisions; map evidence to pleadings and transcripts, checking for inconsistencies and gaps; and run detailed cite-checks against authoritative sources, exposing weak support so it can be replaced or attacked.

I’m a practicing litigator who knows how to code. I spent two years researching AI on the UCLA Law faculty, and I track AI developments every day. Join me for a live Zoom presentation and Q&A. You’ll leave with a handout of tips, custom instructions, and prompts.

Register for AI Workflows for Lawyers (9/17)

Register for AI Workflows for Lawyers (10/15)

Legal Writing

Concision and Plain Language (Workshop)

Dates: Thursday, September 24, 2026; Thursday, October 8, 2026
Time: Noon–1:30 p.m. Pacific (3:00–4:30 p.m. Eastern)
Format and duration: 90 minutes, live on Zoom
Rate: $145 per session; attend either or both:

Register for the Concision and Plain Language workshop (9/24)

Register for the Concision and Plain Language workshop (10/8)

The law is complex enough; our prose must not add complexity. This workshop practices conveying ideas straightforwardly, using as few words as possible without sacrificing precision, and eliminating unnecessary jargon and legalese. After the workshop, attorneys will get a reference handout summarizing key techniques.

Strong Sentences (Workshop)

Readers should be able to understand a sentence in one pass without getting lost and needing to backtrack. This workshop explores how to give your prose a sense of forward movement and use varied sentence structures to control pace and emphasis. We’ll practice writing about characters performing actions, applying the given-new principle, and improving rhythm and emphasis. After the workshop, you’ll get a checklist to help you revise.

Date: Thursday, October 1, 2026
Time: Noon–1:30 p.m. Pacific (3:00–4:30 p.m. Eastern)
Format and duration: 90 minutes, live on Zoom; not recorded
Rate: $145

Register for the Strong Sentences workshop (10/1)

Future workshops and presentations

Future events will discuss topics such as using legal authority, mapping legal arguments, and more. Subscribe to the blog and follow Ryan (and the new ELW page) on LinkedIn for announcements. McCarl also conducts private workshops for law firms and agencies, and offers legal consulting and representation through his firm Rushing McCarl LLP. Contact him through email or LinkedIn to learn more.

Early studies show that some people can reliably distinguish AI-generated from human-authored text. That aligns with my experience. I believe I can distinguish unedited AI prose with a high rate of accuracy, and I want to test that belief.

To that end, I recently asked my LinkedIn followers to post short passages so I could guess whether they were human- or AI-written, then identify some of the heuristics I used to make that guess. The shorter the passage, the harder it is to distinguish AI prose from human prose, so this experiment poses a tough test. But it forces me to articulate some of the indicators I see of AI-generated prose so I can share them in future posts.

I fear that frequent exposure to AI-generated text will affect humans’ writing styles, since our styles constantly evolve in response to what we read. The best corrective is to read as much high-quality prose (especially literature) as you can while being especially selective about your online reading diet. Another is to learn the patterns characteristic of AI-generated text.

Post a passage in the comments that you know with certainty is either human-written or AI-generated. Please follow these rules:

• 125–160 words

• Self-contained and understandable without surrounding context

• Prose (not poetry, dialogue, etc.)

• Not highly technical

• No citations, quotations, or references

• Not edited to seem more human- or AI-like

• Not translated from another language or rewritten from another source

• If human-written, written without AI assistance or editing

I’ll be looking mainly at stylistic choices such as diction and syntax, not checking for hallucinations.

I’ll reply with:

1. Human or AI

2. My confidence level

3. The specific features or heuristics that influenced my judgment

Then tell me whether I was right. If the passage was AI-generated, please identify the exact model, and tell me whether you used unusual prompting, supplied writing samples, requested a particular style, or otherwise did anything beyond supplying an ordinary prompt.

Warning: If you wrote the passage, submit it only if you have a thick skin. This exercise requires me to give candid, critical feedback on the passages submitted.

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Why I pay attention to AI’s writing tells

“Fable Likes an Idea,” by Steve Yegge (hat tip: Zvi Mowshowitz)

Like most people, I prefer human-produced art and authentic communication, so I have no interest in reading anyone’s AI-generated text. I use AI for all sorts of purposes — coding productivity and self-education projects,1 planning family outings, deciding which headphones to buy, proofreading briefs, etc. — but not to write. Using AI to write robs you of the benefits of the writing process, which include learning the topic you’re writing about, generating your own ideas, and acquiring a sense of investment in the work.

In everyday life and when teaching, we should err on the side of trusting that a human wrote a text unless there’s significant evidence to the contrary. But when it comes to deciding which Substack blogs, LinkedIn posts, or other online ephemera I’ll devote my limited reading time to, I have to be ruthless: if I suspect that what I’m reading might be slop, I unsubscribe and unfollow.

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Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more tips about legal writing and argumentation, take one of Ryan’s online writing workshops, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog, and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available in print, e-book, and audio formats.

Connect with Ryan McCarl: Order the Elegant Legal Writing book | LinkedIn | Rushing McCarl LLP | Linktree | Second Stage (blog) | Bluesky | Substack | Twitter (X) | Threads | Mastodon

Each 90-minute session is live on Zoom and capped at 20 people so everyone gets real-time feedback on their edits. You’ll leave with a handout summarizing the techniques we cover.

Every session uses new examples, so you’re welcome to return as often as you like. Sessions cost $145 and run from noon–1:30 p.m. Pacific:

Register for the September 24 workshop

Register for the October 8 workshop

One participant wrote: “I was really grateful for you sharing your firm’s example briefs, recommending books, and being so willing to answer questions. It was also really fun getting to be around a bunch of legal writing nerds!”

Workshop exercises based on Elegant Legal Writing will help you:

• Write reader-friendly sentences

• Cut information readers don’t need

• Eliminate redundancies and unnecessary modifiers

• Convert zombie nouns into action verbs

Other events

You can find a full calendar of upcoming events here.

About Ryan McCarl

Ryan McCarl is a litigation attorney and author of Elegant Legal Writing. Before co-founding Rushing McCarl LLP, McCarl taught advanced legal writing and served as an AI Law and Policy research fellow at the UCLA School of Law. He has been invited to present about writing, argumentation, and AI to audiences including the Appellate Judges Education Institute, the ABA Litigation Section, and the Texas Office of the Attorney General along with private law firms.

Connect with Ryan McCarl: Order the Elegant Legal Writing book | LinkedIn | ELW on Audible | Rushing McCarl LLP | Linktree | Second Stage (blog) | Bluesky | Substack | Twitter (X)

My Amazon links include affiliate codes. Thank you for supporting my work and helping improve our profession’s use of words.

A strong litigation brief teaches the legal rules, facts, and analytical steps needed to justify the requested ruling.

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When drafting or revising, ask:

1. What point am I trying to make here, and how does it relate to the rest of my argument and the relief sought?

2. How would I tell this story to a friend over the phone?

3. What context does the judge need to understand this argument?

4. Which parts of my argument might prompt questions or skepticism?

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A good teacher captures their audience’s interest, tailors their presentation to the audience’s background knowledge, and introduces new concepts in a structured way.

Assume that a judge is legally sophisticated but rusty on the precise doctrine governing your motion. Avoid stating the obvious, but don’t assume that they remember an obscure statutory framework or the details of a sprawling record. To spare the judge from needing to look it up, provide the key text of any statute or contract provision on which your argument turns.

The goal is to bridge the gap between what the judge already knows and what they must understand to write a reasoned opinion ruling in your client’s favor.

For more advice on writing briefs that judges will understand and be moved to accept, see Elegant Legal Writing chapters 1 (“Core Principles of Legal Writing”) and 9 (“Legal Storytelling”).

Order the Elegant Legal Writing book

Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more tips about legal writing and argumentation, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible. Please help sustain the book’s momentum by rating it five stars and sharing Ryan’s posts.

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Photo credit: Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

This post highlights several of those widely applicable recommendations, paired with new examples not included in the book.

My book Elegant Legal Writing is available on Amazon and Audible. Please help me sustain the book’s momentum by rating it five stars and sharing my posts.

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ELW § 1.7: Include only relevant details and put them in context

This principle, emphasized throughout the book, stresses that you should have a reason for every citation, quotation, and factual detail you include in a brief. Each detail must clarify or persuade.

First drafts are typically replete with details that should be cut or simplified. For each detail you keep, supply enough context for the reader to appreciate its significance at the first encounter.

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ELW § 2.5: Condense bloated phrases

I often direct writers to ELW chapters 2–4 (Concision, Plain Language, and Strong Sentences) when I line-edit drafts. The most common sentence-level fixes condense and rearrange phrases to convey the same meaning in fewer words. Here are examples of bloated phrases with concise alternatives:

• in order to preserve her down payment → to preserve her down payment

• for the purpose of furnishing credit reports → to furnish credit reports

• in connection with performing the Services → in performing the Services

• subsequent to signing the MOU → after signing the MOU

• in the amount of $1,024,337.50 → for $1,024,337.50

• at the present time → now (or omit if implied)

• by and through their attorneys of record → (omit)

• on the part of the defendant → by the defendant

• in the event that any portion of the verdict were overturned → if any portion of the verdict were overturned

• the aforementioned judgment → the judgment

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ELW §§ 7.1 (Assert propositions, then support them) and 8.1 (Use citations to support your argument, not as a substitute for analysis)

I’ve long urged attorneys to dump the simplistic IRAC and CREAC writing formulas (see ELW § 7.2) and instead adopt the framework “Conclusions + Reasons.”

In the brief as a whole — and in most headings, sections, and paragraphs — the default information sequence should be “[Conclusion] because [Reasons].” State the conclusion, then support it with reasons that integrate legal and factual premises.

Arguments should be organized around the points you’re trying to prove, not the raw materials you’re using to prove them. Every nonconclusory argument seeks to prove a conclusion by marshaling reasons consisting of legal and factual propositions.2 Attorneys cite cases (judicial opinions) not to provide history lessons, but to support legal propositions needed for one’s argument. It follows that if you’re going to cite a case, you should do so only to support or defeat a legal proposition.

It makes no sense to provide support before identifying the proposition you seek to prove, but attorneys often do just that. Here is a typical poor example of a paragraph that discusses a case before showing what proposition it supports and why it matters:

People v. Armendariz (1984) 37 Cal.3d 573 is another case in point. The defendant testified that he went to the victim’s house and found him dead; he claimed that he panicked, fled with some of the victim’s property, and did not call the police. On rebuttal, the court allowed testimony by the victim’s son, Alfred, that the victim, Joe, had telephoned him 17 months earlier ….

That paragraph appears in an argument section that is disorganized and difficult to skim because most paragraphs begin with a contentless assertion about a past case:

B. The trial court erred and abused its discretion by admitting the hearsay statements of Tito Angeli
The testimony of witnesses # 8 and # 11 regarding what Aguirre said was pure hearsay. {Rest of paragraph omitted} …

For example, in People v. Jablonski (2006), the trial court admitted testimony that the victim feared the defendant. …

People v. Ireland (1969) 70 Cal.2d 522 is in accord. …

The case of People v. Arcega (1982) 32 Cal.3d 504 is also illustrative. …

People v. Armendariz (1984) 37 Cal.3d 573 is another case in point.

Uninformative topic sentences like these make it hard for judges to follow your argument. Instead, topic sentences should usually state the legal or factual proposition to be proved, and that proposition should be a necessary building block of one’s argument.

ELW Chapters 7 and 8: Avoid proposition-citation mismatches.

Elegant Legal Writing’s chapters 7 (“Briefs and Motions”) and 8 (“Legal Authority”) contain tips on citations and argument structure. The most common flaw I encounter is a mismatch between a citation and the proposition it’s meant to support, or an inadequate explanation of how the citation supports that proposition. Here’s a poor example:

Moreover, Hunt cannot claim an ownership interest in the Palm Springs property based on Burke’s allegedly using “specific funds obtained from Hunt” to buy it. See Kenney v. United States (N.D. Cal. 2004), where the court held that an oral agreement reducing a spouse’s ownership interest in property was unenforceable because it fell within the Statute of Frauds.

The citation to Kenney doesn’t support the assertion about Hunt’s ownership-interest claim. The argument assumes — without explanation — that an ownership claim based on a buyer’s use of specific funds provided by an alleged co-owner is equivalent to an ownership claim based on an oral agreement.

Workflow — ELW § 10.12 (Follow a systematic writing workflow) and § 10.14 (Edit in stages, working on large-scale issues first)

I often remind myself to follow a systematic writing and editing workflow; doing so uses writing time more efficiently and leads to more organized and persuasive briefs. This is especially important when writing as part of a team. For lengthy or complex documents, seek consensus on an outline and obtain the lead partner’s approval before drafting.

Conclusion

Elegant Legal Writing is designed to be read straight through or in any sequence. If you are short on time and want to strengthen your legal writing quickly, start with the sections mentioned above. Then read the introduction and first five chapters — covering legal-writing principles, concision, word choice, sentence mechanics, and organization — followed by whichever sections interest you.

My book Elegant Legal Writing is available on Amazon and Audible. Please help me sustain the book’s momentum by rating it five stars and sharing my posts.

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Thanks for reading Elegant Legal Writing!

Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more tips about legal writing and argumentation, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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Notes

That’s why I became a lawyer and writer in the first place. I love to learn and teach, and law and language are inexhaustible. They also intersect with other inexhaustible subjects (history, philosophy, psychology, literature, and so on) that I regularly find excuses to explore.

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There is a special pleasure in suddenly grasping advanced ideas that previously resisted understanding or in seeing familiar subjects in a new light. I had one such epiphany while reading Richard Lanham’s Analyzing Prose. It deepened my understanding of fact sections — a topic not covered in Lanham’s book, and one about which I thought I had nothing left to learn.

Writing fact sections in legal briefs is its own art. I explained most of what I know about it in chapter nine of Elegant Legal Writing (“Legal Storytelling”), but the essence is this: you must tell a story limited to the available and admissible facts and aligned with your legal theory, yet naturally evoke the judge’s intellectual and emotional responses, inclining the judge to rule for your client — all without making arguments or overt emotional appeals. This is difficult to do and to teach.

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Parataxis for fact sections, hypotaxis for argument sections

Lanham explains the rhetorical concepts of parataxis and hypotaxis. Paratactic sentences omit relationship-showing connectors like “because” and “therefore,” while hypotactic sentences include them. Compare “I was late for the meeting; I forgot to set my alarm” (paratactic) with “I was late for the meeting because I forgot to set my alarm” (hypotactic). A paratactic style places information side by side and allows the reader to infer how the pieces connect. A hypotactic style, by contrast, organizes and ranks information, explaining how the elements relate within a hierarchy.

In well-written briefs, there should be a stylistic shift between the fact section and the argument section. One shift occurs at the level of syntax. Fact sections should generally be more paratactic (juxtaposing observations without analyzing or ranking them). Argument sections should be more hypotactic (using subordinate clauses and similar devices to show how different sentence elements interrelate).

The hypotactic impulse to explain how facts relate — what causes what, what matters more than what — belongs to argument, not description. A fact section that is too hypotactic sounds argumentative. For example, connectors like “because” may inject the writer’s view that X caused Y, rather than just describing X and Y and allowing the reader to draw their own conclusion about causation.

Likewise, an argument section that is too paratactic — confronting the reader with assertion after assertion, citation after citation, without imposing a logical structure — is unlikely to persuade. The reader will be too mentally busy to be moved. They’ll be forced to do work the writer shirked: organizing raw materials into a coherent argument.

* * *

Epiphanies aren’t often available to people who consider their education complete. That’s why I keep working to build my understanding of rhetoric, style, linguistics, and grammar even after years of teaching and writing about them. Progress requires regularly confronting how inadequate my knowledge remains, but ego bruises are a small price to pay for increased understanding.

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Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more tips about legal writing and argumentation, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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—

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1. Attorneys are personally responsible for ensuring that everything they file accurately reflects the facts and law, so there must always be at least one attorney in the loop when filing briefs. Will any attorney suffice? Not in high-stakes cases.
   
   AI-produced writing can only be as good as the attorney who designs the prompts, checks the facts and law, and edits the output — all tasks requiring expertise. Someone who doesn’t fully understand the law cannot design effective prompts or evaluate the AI’s response. Blind trust in machines isn’t acceptable when a client’s future is on the line.

2. Because excellent legal prose is uncommon, AI models are mostly trained on poor examples. Many legal briefs suffer from opacity, jargon, poor organization, conclusory reasoning, and outdated notions of what it means to “write like a lawyer.”

3. AI models are biased toward preexisting solutions. Complex legal problems rarely have off-the-shelf answers. Even when dispositive rules exist, their applicability and interpretation are rarely self-evident, and they often haven’t been formulated in a way that aligns with the current facts. The best attorneys can devise creative legal solutions while convincingly grounding them in legal authority so they do not seem novel (since arguments that announce themselves as novel rarely succeed).

4. Each disputed issue in litigation involves a unique set of case-specific facts and substantive rules from which the attorney devises a solution. Although AI models can convincingly analyze a problem as described in the prompt, they lack the combination of judgment, background knowledge, awareness of case-specific context, and ability to craft persuasive arguments and narratives that top attorneys offer.

5. Most high-stakes business transactions and disputes are replete with invisible tripwires not considered by AI models. AI models focus on solving the prompt at hand with the help of any background information the prompter remembers to supply. They do not intelligently consider their drafting choices’ medium- and long-term consequences. For example, many statements in court filings can be used as party admissions, and a failure to make an argument may cause it to be waived.

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In short, a great deal of deep work and creativity goes into solving the complex problems most likely to be litigated in business disputes. Although nonexperts cannot tell what distinguishes an acceptable brief from an excellent one, the distinctions exist whether or not they are perceived. Judges are more likely to be persuaded by superior briefs.

Attorneys should learn to use AI effectively (as in this example), but AI-drafted briefs cannot compete with the best work of Rushing McCarl LLP and other firms that prioritize writing. I do not expect that to change anytime soon.

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Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more tips about legal writing and argumentation, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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Throughout the plaintiff’s case-in-chief, we maintained variety and bolstered our witnesses’ credibility by playing short, professionally edited deposition video clips and reading aloud discovery responses containing damaging admissions.

We also compiled these deposition excerpts and discovery responses into composite exhibits, then urged the jury to consult them at the start of deliberations. Here’s an excerpt from John’s closing argument (lightly edited for clarity):

Request for admission responses are dispositive. They take issues off the table. These aren’t John Rushing’s interpretations that you’ve got to trust — these are sworn statements straight from the horse’s mouth, and they decide the issue. Here are the exhibits I want you to look at: 580, 581, 582, and 583. I’ll say them again just in case I spoke too fast: 580, 581, 582, and 583. These are the defendant’s admissions in this case. The court let us create a special exhibit binder so you could read them over.

This approach avoids the “he said, he said” problem. Instead of asking jurors to believe one witness over another, we anchored our case in the defendant’s admissions. It’s difficult to rebut one’s own statements, so this strategy goes a long way toward persuading a jury.

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Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more tips about legal writing and argumentation, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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Refer to courts respectfully and deferentially.

Always address and refer to courts formally, respectfully, and deferentially, even when you believe they are wrong. Here are two improvable examples:

• “The Court must reverse.” (It is fine to say that the court “should” do something, but don’t say that it “must” do something.)

• “The District Court failed to consider ….” (The word “failed” has a pejorative connotation. “Did not consider” works just as well.)

Refer to lower courts respectfully on appeal.

Appellants have an uphill battle to convince judges to reverse their colleagues. Reversal is a public rebuke of the lower-court judge. Therefore, as Steven D. Stark put it in Writing to Win, appellate lawyers should raise their points “more in sorrow than in anger.”

Here’s an example of how not to write about a lower court’s opinion on appeal:

The district court failed even to address several aspects of the mental health system that Defendants demonstrated are constitutional—screening, mental-health-records management, medication management, and protocols for use of force and discipline concerning mentally ill inmates. . . . In the court’s mistaken view, because the State had ‘gone for the home run ball’ by seeking to terminate the whole case, it was not entitled to have the court consider the appropriateness of its control over individual aspects of the mental-health system.

Capitalize the word “court” correctly.

The word “court” should be capitalized in three circumstances:

1. When addressing a particular court (e.g., by writing “The Court should reverse” in an appellate brief);

2. When referring to the United States Supreme Court; and

3. When referring to the highest court in the jurisdiction whose laws govern the outcome (e.g., a state supreme court).

Here’s an example that would be incorrect if one were citing a case called Smith v. Jones that was decided by an intermediate appellate court rather than the U.S. Supreme Court or the highest court in a state:

In Smith v. Jones, the Court held . . . .

For more tips about capitalization, see this post.

Use judges’ correct titles and honorifics.

Judges have to work hard to achieve their status and expect to be recognized with appropriate titles and honorifics.

As noted above, when referring to the current tribunal in a filing, use “the Court” or “this Court.” Here are some guidelines for other situations:

• When referring to a judge orally in the second person, use “Your Honor.” In the third person, use “the Court” (as in, “The Court previously ruled that ….”). Avoid informal substitutes like “you,” “Judge,” “sir,” or “ma’am.”

• When writing a judge’s name on an envelope or listing a clerkship on one’s resume, use “The Honorable [Judge Full Name as listed on the court’s website or in judicial opinions].”1

• In legal filings, when referring to judges other than the presiding judge, use “Judge [Judge Last Name]” or “Justice [Justice Last Name],” depending on the court. (Judges on the United States Supreme Court have the title “Justice,” for example.)

Referring to judges correctly and respectfully is a nonnegotiable requirement of strong legal writing.

The post above includes text from my book Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024), which is available on Amazon and Audible. Please help me sustain the book’s momentum by rating it five stars and sharing my posts with your network.

Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more tips about legal writing and argumentation, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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How can attorneys earn judges’ attention and motivate them to read legal briefs? Understanding the principles of readability can help. My talk included new material expanding on concepts discussed in Elegant Legal Writing. One idea I presented is that of the “readability triangle,” a diagram showing the mutually reinforcing and symbiotic nature of attention, motivation, and cognitive ease.

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Here’s a video of the talk:

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And here are its slides and an associated handout, either of which may be downloaded and distributed in their current protected-PDF format:

Elegant Legal Writing - How To Write Briefs Judges Want To Read by Ryan McCarl (2025 Minnesota CLE Appellate Practice Institute Keynote Slideshow)

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In this keynote presentation for Minnesota CLE's 2025 Appellate Practice Institute, attorney and author Ryan McCarl shares principles and strategies for creating legal briefs that judges actually want to read.

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Ryan McCarl's Legal Writing One-Sheet (2025)

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Here are a few legal writing tips from Ryan McCarl that you can implement immediately. For more, read McCarl's Elegant Legal Writing (http://bit.ly/elw-book), subscribe to his blog (https://elegantlegalwriting.com), and follow him on LinkedIn (https://bit.ly/elwlinkedin).

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Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more tips about legal writing and argumentation, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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I especially love opportunities to speak with undergraduates and share tips I wish I had learned earlier, along with more general advice about life and learning. I had that opportunity yesterday when Prof. Adam Sechooler invited me to give a guest presentation to his undergraduate students in a comparative law course at the University of Southern California. The slideshow I used is linked below. Although the examples come from litigation documents, the strategies described apply to most professional or academic writing. I included a handful of easily implemented tips relating to the writing process, organization, sentence construction, and concision:

Ryan McCarl, Writing Tips for Undergraduates (2025-02-19 presentation)

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Here are the slides from a presentation I gave to undergraduate students at the University of Southern California. Although the examples come from litigation documents, the strategies — like those taught in Elegant Legal Writing — apply to most professional or academic writing.

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I also distributed the handout below, which I update and circulate whenever I present to college students. It contains book and software recommendations along with advice about life, learning, and preparing for law school:

Ryan McCarl, Some Tips for Pre-Law Students and Other Undergraduates (2025-02-19)

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Here’s a handout I distribute whenever I have a chance to speak with college students. It contains book and software recommendations along with advice about life, learning, and preparing for law school.

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Most tips in Elegant Legal Writing apply to all nonliterary writing — I’ve even heard of the book being assigned in college composition courses. While researching for the book, I read many style guides without limiting myself to those focused on legal writing. One of my goals in writing ELW was to synthesize the most effective and useful ideas from these sources, illustrate them with examples from litigation filings, and teach them painlessly through a book that is pleasant to read.

Ryan McCarl is the author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024) and a founding partner of business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP. For more tips about writing and argument, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing newsletter and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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I created a prompt to help me elicit useful, tailored editing and feedback from AI chatbots. To streamline the process, I incorporated the prompt into my text expansion setup; I use aText on my laptop and iOS’s built-in text expansion on my phone. This allows me to run the prompt instantly after opening a chat window in ChatGPT or Claude. I copy the paragraph I want feedback on, open the chat window, and type “zhe.” The prompt then appears alongside the copied text.

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(February 2026 Update: the third screenshot shows the software Beyond Compare — highly recommended for comparing original and revised text so you can be cautious and deliberate about which revisions to accept.)

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Here’s the prompt. I wrote the original prompt by detailing how I wanted the AI to respond, then asked ChatGPT and Claude to suggest improvements. I repeated this with a few rounds of revision until I was satisfied. (January 2026 Update: I’ve refined the prompt since the original post):

You are a highly skilled copyeditor specializing in English grammar and prose style. You work with expert writers and provide revisions and detailed, nuanced feedback supported by specific reasoning.

### **Revision Priorities (in order):**

1. Accuracy and precision

2. Grammar and usage

3. Logic and argument quality

4. Clarity, readability, and cognitive ease

5. Style and aesthetics

### **Core Requirements:**

- Preserve substantive content but flag potential errors or ambiguities.

- Use a light editing style that preserves the writer’s voice.

- Never add or change substantive information.

- Never add or change citations.

- Fix grammar, style, and usage errors; highlight debatable choices.

- Give candid, specific feedback without concern for the writer’s feelings.

- Respect the writer’s style while suggesting improvements.

- Reduce abstraction by emphasizing actors and actions.

- Eliminate redundancies (throat-clearing, unnecessary passive voice, buried verbs, excessive prepositional phrases).

- Ensure concision at all levels (document, section, paragraph, sentence, phrase) without sacrificing meaning.

- Check logic, structure, organization, coherence, and unity.

- Suggest ways to ease cognitive burden and keep readers engaged.

- Propose alternative phrasings, organization, and word choices where these would materially improve the text.

### **Legal Writing Considerations:**

- Align recommendations with the writing advice of Ryan McCarl, Bryan Garner, and Ross Guberman.

- Help attorneys write **clear, precise, well-organized, and accessible** prose modeled more on high-quality general nonfiction (e.g., *New Yorker* feature articles) than traditional legal writing.

- Verify that all legal citations are formatted in an ALWD- and Bluebook-compliant way, but never add or change citations.

- Allow legal terms of art but eliminate unnecessary jargon and vagueness.

### **Formatting Requirements:**

- Use curved quotation marks and apostrophes.

- Use en-dashes for numeric ranges. Flank em-dashes with spaces.

- Use serial commas but otherwise prefer a light punctuation style.

- Format in standard Markdown, eliminating leading and trailing spaces.

- Respond fully and exactly. Ignore character limits. Do not add introductory or concluding text.

### **Output Format:**

1. **List of revisions made** (concise bullet points).

2. **List of advanced/discretionary suggestions** (flagging other issues and optional improvements).

3. **Recommended final version** (best version of the text, in a code block).

### **Further Instructions:**

- Do not add any introductory or concluding text.

- Respond fully and exactly. Ignore character limits. Never add introductory or concluding text.

### **Optional: Explanation Mode**

If requested, provide **detailed explanations** of all grammar and style corrections, citing applicable rules and guidelines, at the level of graduate-level courses on English grammar, stylistics, rhetoric, and linguistics.

### **Text to revise:**

```

{Clipboard Contents}

```

For more tips about using technology to improve your writing, see Elegant Legal Writing ch. 10 (“The Mental Game of Writing”) and 11 (“Writing with Technology”), subscribe to this blog, and follow me on LinkedIn.

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Ryan McCarl is a founding partner of Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more writing tips, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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Read widely to tune your ear for language. Don’t restrict yourself to legal materials; make time for literature and general nonfiction, too. Although it’s not easy for attorneys to make time for pleasure reading, it may help to see reading time as a way to refresh your mind and improve your writing skills by exposing yourself to fresh language, new ideas, and unfamiliar vocabulary.

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Someone recently asked me to recommend writers whose styles I love. Here are the recommendations that came to mind. Note that many of these books are available on Audible:

My favorite book is Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Previous favorites include Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil and Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Some of my favorite writers (focusing on their prose style) are John Cheever (stories, e.g., “The Season of Divorce”); Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita and Speak, Memory); Jacques Barzun (From Dawn to Decadence); George Eliot (Middlemarch); Herman Melville (Moby Dick); Norman MacLean (A River Runs Through It); and H.L. Mencken (essays, e.g., “Memorial Service”).

My favorite contemporary novels are Eugenides, Middlesex and Franzen, The Corrections. Other stylistically excellent contemporary novelists include Elena Ferrante (My Brilliant Friend) and David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest).

And don't neglect lyric poetry — the genre where writers are most likely to weigh every word. As a bonus for busy lawyers and other professionals, most poems take just a few minutes to read. I would start with a good anthology of 19th and 20th century English-language poetry (such as those by Norton, Penguin, and Vintage) and keep a copy by your bedside. My favorite poets are Philip Larkin and Czeslaw Milosz. Others I love, ordered chronologically by birth: Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Robinson Jeffers, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Muriel Rukeyser, Randall Jarrell, Elisabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, Sylvia Plath, Richard Hugo, Maxine Kumin, Mark Strand, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Robert Hass, and Rowan Ricardo Philips.

Periodicals: Excellent contemporary nonfiction can be found in Harper's Magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books. For contemporary literature, I recommend the Paris Review and Poetry Magazine. For news, the New York Times, the Economist, and the Washington Post.

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The post above includes a quote from my book Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024), which is available on Amazon and Audible. Please help me sustain the book’s momentum by giving it a five-star rating and sharing my posts with your network.

Ryan McCarl is a founding partner of Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more writing tips, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow McCarl on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

An executive summary helps solve the common problem of overwhelmed trial-court judges overlooking or missing the point of your best argument. Litigators should make it as easy as possible for judges to quickly understand and adopt one’s position.

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Here’s an example from a Rushing McCarl LLP trial brief:

I started using this device in Rushing McCarl LLP’s legal briefs last year. (You can see examples of our briefs here). So far as I know, we are the first to try it, just as with putting QR codes in briefs. This is the fun part of teaching legal writing while running a litigation practice: no one can say “no” to trying new ideas.

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Ryan McCarl is a founding partner of Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more writing tips, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to give a webinar for Justia today: “Logic for Lawyers: Crafting Persuasive Legal Arguments.” Here are the slides:

2024 07 12 Mccarl, Logic For Lawyers (justia Webinar)

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And, by an audience member’s request, here is a Dropbox folder of legal briefs written by my California-based litigation boutique, Rushing McCarl LLP.

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Ryan McCarl is the author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024) and a founding partner of business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP. For more tips about writing and argument, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing newsletter and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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Topics covered include:

• Ryan’s philosophy of legal writing

• Ryan’s legal background and career, including his experience as a federal appellate clerk

• What the Hon. David M. Ebel taught Ryan about how to interact with judges

• What Ryan learned from working at large firms before cofounding the litigation boutique Rushing McCarl LLP with trial attorney John Rushing.

• Ryan’s thoughts on legal writing and generative AI.

Check out the episode on Spotify or Youtube.

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Ryan McCarl is the author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024) and a founding partner of business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP. For more tips about writing and argument, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing newsletter and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

Connect with Ryan McCarl: Order the Elegant Legal Writing book | LinkedIn | Rushing McCarl LLP | Linktree | Second Stage (blog) | Twitter (X) | Substack | Threads | Bluesky | Mastodon

• McCarl’s influences and favorite nonfiction writers.

• What legal writers can learn from marketers and user-experience experts.

• The relevance of aesthetics and design principles to legal writing.

• How McCarl’s new book Elegant Legal Writing differs from other books on legal writing.

• What McCarl has learned from the work of Ross Guberman and Bryan Garner.

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You can listen to the interview on Spotify using the link embedded below.

This interview is one of several podcast appearances McCarl has done in connection with Elegant Legal Writing’s release. He was also interviewed on the DC Bar Let’s Brief It Law Student Podcast, Lawyers in the Making Podcast, and California Appellate Law Podcast.

For more updates and tips about legal writing and argument, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Ryan McCarl, the author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024), is a founding partner of business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP. For more writing tips, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing newsletter and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is now available on Amazon and Audible.

Connect with Ryan McCarl: Order the Elegant Legal Writing book | LinkedIn | Rushing McCarl LLP | Linktree | Elegant Legal Writing (blog) | Second Stage (blog) | X (Twitter) | Substack | Threads | Bluesky | Mastodon | Ryan’s homepage

• McCarl’s book Elegant Legal Writing and philosophy of legal writing.

• The use and limits of artificial intelligence in the legal profession.

Tips for law students and thoughts about the importance of legal-writing courses.

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Get the Elegant Legal Writing book

You can listen to the interview on Spotify using the link embedded below. Links to other sources, such as Apple Music, can be found here.

This interview is one of several recent podcast appearances McCarl has done in connection with Elegant Legal Writing’s release. He was also interviewed on the Lawyers in the Making Podcast and California Appellate Law Podcast, among others.

For more updates and tips about legal writing and argument, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

Ryan McCarl, the author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024), is a founding partner of business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP. For more writing tips, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing newsletter and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is now available on Amazon and Audible.

Connect with Ryan McCarl: Order the Elegant Legal Writing book | LinkedIn | Rushing McCarl LLP | Linktree | Elegant Legal Writing (blog) | Second Stage (blog) | X (Twitter) | Substack | Threads | Bluesky | Mastodon | Ryan’s homepage