Over the last couple weeks, I have read and reread hundreds of posts from legal blogs. My reason for doing this was to screen the entries submitted in the inaugural LexBlog Excellence Awards contest, before sending the finalists off to the judging panel that will select the winners.
In reading through all these posts, I was thrilled to see confirmation of what I already believed – that there are a lot of legal professionals putting a lot of work and thought into writing high-quality posts – posts that are thoughtful, informative, analytical, instructive and sometimes even funny.
But I also found myself making notes of comments I’d make to some of the authors, had I been their editor. There is no right or wrong way to write a blog post. But lawyers often fall into the trap of sounding like, well, lawyers.
Even setting aside the legalisms we might expect, lawyers often exhibit a rigidity in their writing that gets drilled into them starting in law school. Simple changes to some posts could have made them more readable.
So here are some of the random notes I jotted down, in no particular order. Take them or leave them for what they may be worth to you.
Be catchy in your lede. Your lede paragraph is your opportunity to rope in the reader. Lawyers too often squander this opportunity. Use the lede to tell the reader what you’re writing about and why it matters. And keep it brief and punchy.
Don’t bury the lede. I often see posts that start with something like:
“On June 1, 2019, the Supreme Court decided the case of Smith v. Jones, ___ U.S. ___, on appeal from an en banc decision of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.”
Later – maybe in the same long
