Long-winded rule statements are a primary source of bloat in legal briefs. The “CREAC” formula law students are often taught, which calls for stating and explaining rules before applying them, is partly to blame. Another cause is laziness: stating a straightforward rule and supporting it with citations is easy, so lawyers are tempted to dwell on that task.

Build your briefs around their audience. Synthesize, organize, and trim rules, presenting only what the judge needs. Whether you should explain a rule or merely state it and move on also depends on what the judge needs.

Familiar rules don’t need to be explained.

Simple rules can be stated in one or two sentences and backed by a single citation to authority (which I’d put in a footnote); anything more is filler. For many legal issues — especially procedural or evidentiary ones — the parties agree on which rule applies and what the rule says. When that’s so, state the rule quickly and move on.

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For example, this is a straightforward proposition supported by one unexplained citation:

An order granting an anti-SLAPP motion is reviewed de novo. See Flatley v. Mauro, 39 Cal. 4th 299, 325 (2006).

By contrast, your most controversial propositions might need to be supported by several citations. You will need to explain your reasoning and show why the authorities you cite compel the result you want.

Here’s an effective, single-sentence legal standard section for a brief opposing a motion to dismiss:

In ruling on a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, courts assume that the facts alleged in the complaint are true, then ask whether these facts allege a plausible claim for relief under any legal theory.¹

¹ See generally Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 667–84 (2009).

You can add more rules if they become relevant. For example, if the defendant moves to dismiss your complaint based on evidence drawn from somewhere other than the complaint (and not subject to judicial notice), you can add the rule barring that move.

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Save most rule statements for the argument section.

A standalone rule statement is not an argument; it just supplies a legal premise, which must then be combined with factual premises to make an argument. Instead of writing lengthy legal-standard sections that discuss the law in isolation, it’s usually better to keep rule statements short, then elaborate or remind the court of other rules as needed in the argument section while applying the law to your case.

Here’s a good example:

RedGroup supplied only boilerplate objections to Torey’s requests for admission. But a party cannot object to an entire request for admission unless the entire request is objectionable. Rather, it must object to the part it finds objectionable, then respond to the rest. When it objects, it must state the specific ground for each objection and claim any applicable privilege.

Since RedGroup objected to all the requests in their entirety, its responses disregard these requirements. The Court should strike its objections, order it to provide complete answers, and award fees.

Experienced trial judges have read countless discovery motions, and they will probably skim sections that describe the applicable standards when these are presented separately from the argument. If you are the party moving to compel discovery responses, however, you often want to bring these favorable standards to the court’s attention. To that end, apply them in your argument section rather than reciting them in a legal standard section.

For complex rule frameworks, give the judge a legal overview in a neutral tone.

As with most writing guidelines, exceptions apply. Some disputes — especially complex business disputes of the sort handled by my firm, Rushing McCarl LLP — involve complicated or niche legal issues for which the judge might appreciate a more detailed, treatise-like overview of the applicable legal framework.

For a good example, see the Relevant Law section (pages 19–22) of this motion to dismiss we drafted in a case where a bank sued our client, a trucking company, on the theory that it had committed conversion by buying FedEx shipping routes from the bank’s debtor. The case involved complex issues at the intersection of conversion (a common-law intentional tort) and secured transactions (governed by UCC Article 9, a statutory contract-law regime).

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It’s also worth checking out that brief’s table of contents (pp. 8–9), which we used to summarize the argument (though some headings are too long); and the appendix (pp. 41–42), where we included the security agreement’s 237-word collateral description for the court’s reference without letting it eat a page and a half of our brief.

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, follow Ryan on LinkedIn, and register for a workshop. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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For lawyers, the most important writing software is Microsoft Word. The post below shares advanced keyboard shortcuts and a macro from my current setup that can reduce Word headaches and make you more efficient. First, though, a plug for Thursday’s AI Workflows for Lawyers presentation:

The post below covers two advanced tips from my Word setup:

1. LegalFormatFixes: A macro to fix the common legal formatting problems in one keypress

2. Advanced keyboard shortcuts for lawyers (see also this post)

You can find other tips in Chapter 11 of Elegant Legal Writing (“Writing with Technology”). For more comprehensive coverage of Word, I made an Advanced Microsoft Word for Lawyers screencast for my law students and associates a few years ago; it’s still worth watching, as the software’s fundamentals haven’t changed.

Install my LegalFormatFixes macro

I’ve assigned the shortcut F8 to run my “LegalFormatFixes” macro in Word. This macro trims excess spaces; replaces straight quotation marks with curved quotation marks and apostrophes; and replaces plain spaces with nonbreaking spaces after § and ¶ in one keypress. The macro is also called automatically whenever I run a different macro that updates the TOC/TOA/cross-refs and saves to PDF.1

Paul Beverley introduced me to many useful macros. His Word Macro Tools website is a useful place to start if you’d like to learn more about them. Advanced Claude and ChatGPT models make it much easier to design and install macros than it used to be.

Download LegalFormatFixes and installation instructions (free). The download includes instructions for assigning the F8 key to the macro.

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Set up keyboard shortcuts for characters and tools you use often

One principle for using computers efficiently is to use the keyboard more and the mouse less. This requires learning and using keyboard shortcuts — and setting up your own. (A text expansion program is also essential.)

Keyboard shortcuts are especially important in Word because its menus are confusing and bloated with features that most lawyers never use. It shouldn’t take several clicks to insert a cross-reference field or a section or pilcrow character (§ or ¶).

Along with knowing the basic built-in shortcuts (cut, copy, paste, undo, select-all, find, and hyperlink), lawyers should learn or create keyboard shortcuts for commands they use often. A good first shortcut to create is one that maps a function key (like F4) to the Word command ToolsCustomizeKeyboard; this lets you quickly create shortcuts for any command, sparing you the need to hunt for the Customize Keyboard dialog each time you need it.2

To pull that dialog up for the first time, before you’ve set up a shortcut:

• Mac: Tools > Customize Keyboard

• Windows: File > Options > Customize Ribbon > Keyboard shortcuts: Customize

The command names below are the names to look for under the All Commands row in the Customize Keyboard dialog.

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Legend for Mac keys: ⌘ = Command; ⌥ = Option; ⌃ = Control; ⇧ = Shift. The shortcuts assume a U.S. keyboard. Function keys may also require Fn. Each entry lists Mac first, then Windows.

Navigating text

• EditGoTo — Go to a page, heading, or other target. Mac: F5 or ⌥⌘G. Windows: F5 or Ctrl+G.

• GoBack — Return to a previous edit. Mac: ⇧F5. Windows: Shift+F5.

• Move, select, or delete by word. On Mac, use ⌥← / ⌥→ to move between words; add ⇧ to select words as you go; and use ⌥Delete to delete the preceding word. On Windows, use Ctrl+← / Ctrl+→ to move, add Shift to select, and use Ctrl+Backspace to delete the preceding word.

Finding and formatting

• EditFindDialog (Mac) / EditFind (Windows) — Advanced Find. I remap the standard Find shortcut (⌘F on Mac, Ctrl + F on Windows) to one of these commands.

• PasteTextOnly — Paste without source formatting. Mac: ⇧⌘V. Windows: Ctrl+Shift+V.

• CopyFormat / PasteFormat — Copy and apply text formatting. Mac: ⌥⌘C / ⌥⌘V. Windows: Ctrl+Alt+C / Ctrl+Alt+V.

• InsertPageBreak — Mac: ⌘Return. Windows: Ctrl+Enter.

Review and proofing

• InsertAnnotation — Insert a comment. Mac: ⌥⌘A. Windows: Ctrl+Alt+M.

• ToolsProofing — Check spelling and grammar. F7 on either platform. Word’s spelling and grammar functions are inexplicably poor, but they can still catch basic errors.

• AcceptChangesOrAdvance / RejectChangesOrAdvance — Assign shortcuts to these commands to review tracked changes more efficiently. My Mac shortcuts are ⌃⌥A and ⌃⌥R. On Windows, you can assign Ctrl+Alt+A and Ctrl+Alt+R.

• ShowAll — Show or hide formatting marks, making extra spaces, tabs, and paragraph breaks visible. Mac: ⌘8. Windows: Ctrl+Shift+8 (use the number row).

• ToolsRevisionMarksToggle — Turn change tracking on or off. Mac: ⇧⌘E. Windows: Ctrl+Shift+E. Turning tracking off preserves existing tracked changes.

References and fields

• InsertFootnoteNow — Mac: ⌥⌘F. Windows: Ctrl+Alt+F.

• InsertCrossReference — Assign a shortcut; on Mac, I suggest ⇧⌘C if it isn’t assigned to another command you use.

• MarkCitation — Mark a table of authorities entry. Mac: ⌥⇧I. Windows: Alt+Shift+I.

• UpdateFields — Update selected fields. F9 on either platform.

• ToggleFieldDisplay — Show selected field codes or results. Mac: ⇧F9. Windows: Shift+F9.

• ViewFieldCodes — Show all field codes or results. Mac: ⌥F9. Windows: Alt+F9.

Symbols

To assign shortcuts for these symbols, use Tools > Customize Keyboard > Common Symbols (or Insert > Advanced Symbol) on Mac, or Insert > Symbol > More Symbols > Special Characters > Shortcut Key on Windows.

• Nonbreaking Space — Mac: ⌥Spacebar. Windows: Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar.

• Nonbreaking Hyphen — On Mac, assign a shortcut; I suggest ⌃⌥Hyphen. On Windows, use Ctrl + Shift + Hyphen.

• Section (§) — Mac: ⌥6. Windows: Alt+0167 on the numeric keypad. Replace the Windows one with a sensible alternative.

• Paragraph/pilcrow (¶) — Mac: ⌥7. Windows: type 00B6, select those four characters, then press Alt+X. Replace the Windows one with a sensible alternative.

• En Dash (–) — Use for numeric ranges. Mac: ⌥Hyphen. Windows: Ctrl+numeric-keypad minus.

• Em Dash (—) — Use to set off an interruption or parenthetical thought or create an emphatic mid-sentence break (see this post for guidance). Mac: ⌥⇧Hyphen. Windows: Ctrl+Alt+numeric-keypad minus.

Sources: Microsoft’s Word shortcut reference, hyphenation guide, and symbol-code reference. Shortcut behavior can vary with Word version, keyboard layout, and local customization.

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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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The litigator, coder, and self-educator in me all find much to like about AI. I spent two years studying it as a research fellow at UCLA Law, and the release of Claude Code turned my programming hobby into a superpower. I’ve started representing clients in AI-related matters and offering presentations and instructional videos about AI workflows for lawyers.

Part of me, however — and perhaps the greater part — thinks that AI is bad news. It threatens human thinking, learning, and art. It fills social-media feeds, inboxes, and dockets with bad prose. It erodes minds and introduces mistrust into communications whose authenticity can no longer be assumed (Did Dad really write that wedding speech?).

AI is especially likely to hurt education. That’s because structured learning requires a personal investment of time, effort, and care from teachers and students. That effort and those relationships are what enable learning, so they can’t be skipped — but helping users skip such effort, allowing it to be delegated to a machine, is what AI does. AI and education are, in that sense, almost inherently antithetical.

Consider: virtually any nonphysical task that might be assigned in K-12 schools and colleges can now be at least competently performed by the best AI models. Artful prompting isn’t even needed; just upload the problem to Claude Fable or GPT-6 Astra, and it will take care of the rest.

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The education world is prone to chasing tech fads. One reason is the fortune that can be made by selling edtech products (and then using them to collect student data); another is America’s permanent state of cultural insecurity about what subjects are worth teaching, and whether schools are preparing kids for the jobs of the future, whatever those might be.

Whether or not AI-enabled automation ever leads to widespread job losses, that prediction alone has triggered calls for sidelining traditional subjects and methods in favor of “preparing kids for the future.” (This can be rephrased as: “changing what we teach to align with someone-in-power’s guess about the future.”) It’s the latest round of a centuries-old curriculum battle.

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My essay is a bit off-topic if you follow me for briefwriting tips, but still of interest to lawyers in their capacity as members of the educated public who hope to expand its ranks:

The Death of the Mind

Ryan McCarl

Illustration by Marysabella Llamas for the Chicago Maroon.

If artificial intelligence–powered cheating accelerates America’s educational decline, gullible administrators will share the blame. The University of Chicago, my alma mater, recently arranged for all students and faculty to receive access to Anthropic’s Claude software. It is thus working not to educate students, but to help them bypass education.

AI poses an unprecedented threat to education. Its purpose, evident in the term “artificial intelligence” itself, is to substitute for human thought—to think so its users don’t have to. But thinking is the point of education. Education is the product of the mental struggle for which AI offers itself as a substitute.

Liberal education aims to build the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind that help people solve complex problems and participate intelligently in society. These are built over time, through practice and feedback that gradually change students’ brains. Structured learning activities like essays and problem sets can’t be skipped without losing their benefits. Learning occurs through, and is inseparable from, the investment of time and effort.

AI tools encourage students to skip learning: upload your assignment, the computer will do it for you, and no one will be able to prove that you cheated. Never have students faced a more tempting but self-defeating escape from the woes of homework and grades, or a more addictive and mind-eroding drug.

Although it’s possible for AI to help students learn, that’s the exception. Professors whose expertise lies elsewhere won’t be able to integrate AI in a way that improves their courses; they may know less about the technology than students do. And even if some students have the self-discipline to use AI well, the temptation of using it to avoid unpleasant but edifying tasks is always there, shifting traditional incentives about schoolwork.

The more it seems that everyone is cheating with AI, the more students will cheat, and the more ways they will find to rationalize cheating—which isn’t hard to do when schools welcome the technology that enables it.

Students who prompt their way through school will become dependent on AI. They will not develop the background knowledge or pattern recognition needed to identify complex or nuanced phenomena in the fields they neglect. They will be unable to formulate precise questions when no teacher or textbook is there to supply them.

Far from being useful to future employers, AI-dependent students will be incapable of adding value beyond what the AI itself provides. Their work will often be worse than useless, since their half-baked knowledge and underdeveloped critical-thinking skills will make them pass their misunderstandings on to the model while leaving them unable to guide it or evaluate its output.

AI shortcuts are as tempting and dangerous to faculty as to students; education is a mutual effort that either side can defeat. Great teachers think through their subjects and why students should care. They prioritize learning targets, weigh depth against breadth, and consider how to convey what they know while adjusting to students’ backgrounds and keeping them motivated. Designing useful assignments takes thoughtful effort that AI encourages professors to skip.

Just as teachers have the right to expect that they are providing feedback based on work created by students rather than generated by software, students have the right to expect that an assignment was thoughtfully designed to meet their needs rather than churned out by a computer.

Trust, and the human relationships that depend on it, is at the heart of the AI problem. I want to read prose that the author believes in, not AI slop. I want to mentor law students who write the briefs they sign. When University President Paul Alivisatos explains that the Anthropic partnership will further “our commitment to teaching students how to think independently,” it’s fair to wonder about that statement’s authenticity. Was it generated by the president or by his Claude account? Considering its content, I’m not sure which is more embarrassing.

If universities chase trends rather than safeguard the book-centric activity of thinking, and if they swap their values for the monoculture of efficiency, many will justly wonder what the point of a university is. By embracing a technology that undermines their purpose, universities will help validate the cynical half-truths that higher education is all about signaling, credentialing, and entrenching networks of privilege.

AI hype in all its guises—including Alivisatos telling students that coursework involving AI will “prepare you well to meet the opportunities of a changing world”—invites just this sort of nihilism: What is the point of studying and working if you’ll never measure up to the sameness machine?

The premise of AI, one that ignores how people find purpose in work and suffer from unemployment, is that work should be outsourced to computers at any cost. AI companies’ path to profit lies in convincing executives to pay for tokens instead of employees. What are students to think when their university “partners with” a company that aims to render their careers obsolete and their loans unpayable?

The University of Chicago has always been a home for students who love to learn. Students talk about books and wear shirts extolling the Life of the Mind. It is a former Big Ten school that once bulldozed its football field and replaced it with a library. It now throws the bulldozer into reverse.

Ryan McCarl (A.B. ’08, A.M. ’08, J.D. ’14) is the author of Elegant Legal Writing and a former Maroon Viewpoints columnist. This essay first appeared in the Chicago Maroon on October 6, 2026; an earlier version was published as a letter in the Chicago Sun-Times.

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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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Strong Sentences (Workshop)

Date: Thursday, December 10, 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: $149

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.

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In today’s post, I’m going to dissect a convoluted sentence from a summary-judgment brief. The sentence provides a useful example of how attorneys fatigue judges by being insufficiently considerate of their attention.

An unreadable sentence from an MSJ brief

The sentence in question is from the legal-standard section of a summary-judgment brief. It says:

“A movant who does not bear the burden of persuasion at trial carries the initial burden of production and ultimate burden of persuasion on a motion for summary judgment.”

In practice, lawyers and judges are accustomed to prose like this and already have background knowledge about the summary judgment standard. They may see right through the sentence without being bewildered by its syntax. Even so, the syntax contributes to the overall burden placed on the reader, with no corresponding benefit.

I’ll share a few principles from Elegant Legal Writing that can improve it, then take a deeper look at why the sentence is so hard to follow.

1. Keep the main subject and verb close together.

The central failing of the example sentence is that it separates the main subject and verb (movant and carries) by ten words. We have to wade through a lengthy interruption — a relative clause describing the movant as one “who does not bear the burden of persuasion at trial”— before finding out what that movant does.

It is usually a good idea to keep the main subject and verb close together near the start of a sentence. Placing the main clause first and adding details afterward produces a right-branching sentence: think of the main subject and verb as the trunk of a tree, with further details in branches extending to the right. A left-branching sentence delays the main clause with introductory material.

The example sentence is a mid-branching sentence, one that adds details in the middle of the main clause. Proust, for one, wrote stunning mid-branching sentences. But they are rarely the best choice for attorneys.

2. Prefer shorter sentences.

All else equal, long sentences are harder to read because they require readers to hold information in mind longer and parse more material before a pause. Vary your sentences’ length, but prefer shorter ones, especially when you’re writing about something complex or abstract.

With long sentences, writers must be especially careful to use a transparent syntax — reinforced with punctuation like paired em-dashes or serial commas — while attending to rhythm, emphasis, and information-flow.

3. Write about characters performing actions.

There are several aspects of the “characters performing actions” advice, which is among the most helpful pieces of writing advice I have ever learned or taught.

First, write about “characters” — human or personified actors — whenever you can. Movant is a clumsy procedural label meaning “the party that filed the motion.” The sentence could be improved by rebuilding it around a named party — e.g., “Jones, as the moving defendant, . . . .”

(Whether movant or moving defendant is better is a judgment call. Movant is familiar to litigators, but rare; it’s also close in sound and shape to movement.)

A broader principle underlying the “characters performing actions” advice is to write prose that a reader can visualize. Our example sentence, being a legal rule-statement, is inherently abstract. But beneath the surface, it contains visualizable metaphors. The notion of an argumentative obligation as a burden that one carries is metaphorical. Humans process abstractions through metaphorical links to bodily experience. Writers can use metaphors to help the reader process abstractions.

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4. Prefer positive assertions.

Prefer positive assertions over negative ones. A negative requires the reader to understand a proposition (e.g., what it means to bear the burden of persuasion at trial) while keeping in mind that it is being negated. The reader must also determine how far the negation’s scope extends.

In our example sentence, the problem compounds because of the mid-sentence switch from a negative proposition (does not bear the burden of persuasion at trial) to a positive-form one (carries the burden). Indeed, the negative proposition is nested within the positive one, giving the reader too much to unpack.

5. Avoid ambiguity and needless variation.

Ambiguity. The phrase carry the burden is ambiguous in legal contexts because it can mean either bearing a burden or satisfying it. Words that can plausibly bear several meanings in context cause the reader momentary uncertainty and add to their cognitive burden. Using “has the burden” would sidestep this problem.

Needless variation. Writers shouldn’t swap in a synonym for something just referred to rather than repeating the referent. Our example sentence uses first bear, then carry, to describe the same act. This requires readers to recognize that the synonym refers to the same thing and that the text is continuing the discussion rather than introducing something new.

6. Trim rule statements to discard irrelevant information.

The phrase “a movant who does not bear the burden of persuasion at trial” is a precise but wearying way to describe a party who, in the standard summary-judgment configuration, is the defendant. Do we need the full description? Not unless the case we’re writing about diverges from the standard situation.

Less common situations — those involving cross-claims or affirmative defenses — do not matter if, in this case, the defendant is moving for summary judgment based on the plaintiff’s inability to prove their claims. We can just write “the moving defendant” or “the defendant.”

Rule statements do not need to account for exceptional situations that have nothing to do with the current motion. Trim them to the situation at hand, leaving exhaustive explanations to treatises.

A broader tip is to consider readers’ default expectations when deciding how much to say. For most purposes, you only need to tell readers about information that diverges from defaults, not information that confirms them. (This is an application of philosopher Paul Grice’s second maxim of quantity: “Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.”)

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7. Avoid sudden context shifts.

The example sentence forces the reader to track several distinctions at once: production versus persuasion, initial versus ultimate, and trial versus summary judgment.

The third distinction is especially taxing because it requires the reader to mentally leap between different procedural contexts. The brief’s procedural context involves summary judgment. The relative clause “who does not bear … at trial” switches the context to talk about trial. The main clause then returns to summary judgment: movant … carries … on a motion for summary judgment.

A better approach

What’s most unfortunate about the example sentence is that all its complexity serves no purpose. It wastes the judge’s cognitive resources on propositions that don’t matter.

Legal-standard sections should be kept as short as possible without sacrificing accuracy. They provide general, procedural rule statements at the outermost level of analysis. Since judges routinely handle summary-judgment motions, they can do without lengthy explanations of the procedural standard. The same is true for almost all motions and appeals.

An ideal legal-standard section provides a short summary of the procedural framework supported by footnotes to key cases where the framework is accurately stated and applied. Refer to specific aspects of the standard later on as they become relevant to the argument.

In a motion for summary judgment, I might skip the explanation of burden shifting entirely, instead using a footnote to point to a lengthier explanation in an authoritative source. If I felt I must discuss it, I’d walk the judge through its analytical steps rather than speaking of burdens in the abstract. Use the judge as the character performing actions.

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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, follow Ryan on LinkedIn, and sign up for an online writing workshop. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.

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The examples below come from the exercises for my August 27 and September 3 Concision and Plain Language workshops. Before reading the suggested revision, try to improve each sentence while preserving its meaning.

1. Eliminate redundancy

Original:

While trial courts can take judicial notice of the existence of pleadings in other cases and the fact that particular pleadings were filed in other cases, trial courts cannot take judicial notice of the truth of the allegations in pleadings filed in other cases.

Suggested revision:

Courts can take judicial notice that pleadings were filed in other cases, but not that their allegations are true.

First drafts normally overflow with redundant text. Redundancy occurs when writers make the same point in multiple ways or use several descriptive modifiers where one would do, either because the descriptors are synonymous or because one encompasses the other. The same habit can crop up when one uses two noun phrases where one will do.

In this example, “the existence of pleadings in other cases” and “the fact that particular pleadings were filed in other cases” mean the same thing. “Trial courts,” “take judicial notice,” and “in other cases” are then repeated.

Discarding clutter helps hold readers’ attention while giving them a more direct route to your point.

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2. Get to the point

Original:

IT IS RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED THAT PLAINTIFF HAS PROVED ITS CASE BY PROVING LACK OF PROPER SIDEWALK ACCESS FOR THE DISABLED AND THAT PLAINTIFF HAS PRESENTED REASONABLE ALTERNATIVES AND DEFENDANT HAVING NOT PRESENTED ANY PROOF TO THE CONTRARY, IT IS RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED THAT SUMMARY JUDGMENT SHOULD BE GRANTED IN REGARD TO LIABILITY.

Suggested revision:

The Court should grant summary judgment on liability because Plaintiff’s unrebutted evidence shows inadequate sidewalk access for people with disabilities and the existence of reasonable alternatives.

Throat-clearing phrases force the reader to wade through meaningless introductory text before seeing a sentence’s substance. “It is respectfully submitted that” appears twice in this heading. Neither occurrence adds information the reader needs. “Has proved its case by proving” also delays the substantive point.

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Concise writing prioritizes the reader.

If an idea can be communicated equally well in two ways, lawyers should choose the more concise way unless they have a good reason to do otherwise. Delete text that does not convey important information or serve some other reader-oriented purpose.

Line editing for concision is the easiest part of writing to teach and learn. Bloated phrases and redundancies often follow patterns that are worth memorizing so that you can recognize and correct them immediately. Learning to see the words and phrases you can routinely delete or condense leaves more attention for coherence, organization, rhythm, and persuasion.

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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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Custom Instructions for Lawyers

Custom instructions are standing instructions that an AI model applies to every conversation you have with it and every task it does for you. You can think of them as an invisible part of every prompt that you submit.

The video below is the first in my AI for Lawyers series. It shows you how to adjust your settings and install custom instructions that make it more likely that an AI model will follow your preferences. Strong custom instructions translate into much better results from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other LLMs. I provide a starter set of custom instructions below the video.

You can download my starter set of custom instructions here.

The video begins with a deliberately bad prompt: “Write a concise brief opposing a motion to dismiss a fraud complaint based on misleading terms in an apartment lease.” I did not tell the model the jurisdiction, which terms were misleading, which type of fraud applied, any facts of the case, or the applicable legal authority. That did not stop it from writing a brief.

If you ask an AI model to write a brief without providing facts or authority that could support the brief, it will often try to follow the instruction anyway. That raises the risk that it will fill the gaps with hallucinations, assumptions, or platitudes. The first step to improving its output is to put custom instructions in place.

In the video, I walk through a starter set that tells the model:

• to act as an expert litigation attorney and legal editor for litigators;

• to put accuracy and precision before grammar, logic, clarity, and style;

• never to add substance absent from supplied materials;

• never to change, fix, or reformat a citation or quotation unless asked;

• to use supplied materials unless outside research is specifically requested or plainly required;

• to say, “I can’t verify that from the provided materials,” when support is missing;

• to assign confidence levels to its conclusions;

• not to use identifying information without permission; and

• to answer only what was asked, preserve substance and style when editing, and flag apparent errors instead of silently rewriting them.

When I run the same bad prompt again, the response improves. Instead of inventing the lease terms and relevant facts, the model creates placeholders and asks for the state, court, specific lease language, and legal basis.

The result is still a terrible brief. AI models write stale prose shot through with banality and cliché. Lawyers should not write their briefs with AI or try to pass off AI-generated text as their own. But as the video shows, my starter set of custom instructions immediately reduced the model’s inclination to make things up and run on assumptions.

Custom instructions make it more likely that an AI model will follow your preferences, but they cannot guarantee it. Follow my ground rules for AI use. Think critically and skeptically about AI output, write your own briefs, and exercise professional judgment.

For more advanced AI workflows, register for one of my presentations and subscribe to my YouTube channel. I’ll continue updating my AI for Lawyers series with demonstration videos.

View upcoming workshops and presentations

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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Buy 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.

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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.

Join an online writing workshop

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.

Join my next workshop

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 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 (11/19)

Order the Elegant Legal Writing book

Join a live online writing workshop

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:

November 19 — AI Workflows for Lawyers (Presentation)
60-minute presentation and Q&A · $149
Register for November 19

December 3 — Concision and Plain Language (Workshop)
90-minute workshop · $149
Register for December 3

December 10 — Strong Sentences (Workshop)
90-minute workshop · $149
Register for December 10

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)

Date: Thursday, November 19, 2026
Time: Noon–1 p.m. Pacific (3:00–4:00 p.m. Eastern)
Format: Live presentation and Q&A on Zoom
Rate: $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 run detailed cite-checks against authoritative sources, exposing weak support so it can be replaced or attacked; map evidence to pleadings and transcripts, checking for inconsistencies and gaps; and edit documents by talking about them.

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 (11/19)

Legal Writing

Concision and Plain Language (Workshop)

Date: Thursday, December 3, 2026
Time: Noon–1:30 p.m. Pacific (3:00–4:30 p.m. Eastern)
Format: 90-minute workshop, live on Zoom
Rate: $149

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.

Register for Concision (12/3)

Strong Sentences (Workshop)

Date: Thursday, December 10, 2026
Time: Noon–1:30 p.m. Pacific (3:00–4:30 p.m. Eastern)
Format: 90-minute workshop, live on Zoom
Rate: $149

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.

Register for Strong Sentences (12/10)

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 offers private workshops and presentations for law firms and other organizations, and offers legal representation through his California-based 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.

Put me to the test:

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.

Order the Elegant Legal Writing book

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, 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.

Please share this post with your networks:

Share

Subscribe for free to receive future Elegant Legal Writing posts by email:

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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

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.

Put me to the test:

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.

Order the Elegant Legal Writing book

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.

Please share this post with your networks:

Share

Subscribe for free to receive future Elegant Legal Writing posts by email:

Subscribe

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

Concision and Plain Language (Workshop)

Date: Thursday, December 3, 2026
Time: Noon–1:30 p.m. Pacific (3:00–4:30 p.m. Eastern)
Format and duration: 90 minutes, live on Zoom
Rate: $149

Register for Concision Workshop (12/3)

The law is complex enough; our prose must not add complexity. In my 90-minute online workshops, small groups of attorneys rework real passages from briefs — condensing bloated phrases, purging legalese, and minimizing abstraction.

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.

One participant, attorney Steven Sciple, wrote:

Another 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)

Thanks for reading Elegant Legal Writing! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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.

Join an online writing workshop

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.

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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.

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 share this post with your networks:

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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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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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