Read widely to tune your ear for language
Reading literary prose can refresh your mind and improve your writing by exposing you to fresh language, new ideas, and unfamiliar vocabulary.
In the opening chapter of Elegant Legal Writing, I advise lawyers to read widely as a way to improve their writing skills:
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.
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.
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.
Please share this post with your networks:
Subscribe for free to receive future Elegant Legal Writing posts by email:
Connect with Ryan McCarl: Order the Elegant Legal Writing book | LinkedIn | Rushing McCarl LLP | ELW on Audible | Linktree | Second Stage (blog) | Twitter (X) | Bluesky | Substack | Threads | Mastodon
Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash