Insights

With regard to legal writing, pleadings and briefs are among the first impressions you can make on a judge. Consider anecdotal evidence from Justice Antonin Scalia: “If [I] see someone who has written a sloppy brief, I’m inclined to think that person is a sloppy thinker. It is rare that a person thinks clearly, precisely, carefully, and does not write that way. Contrariwise, it’s rare that someone who is careful and precise in his thought is sloppy in his writing. So it hurts you … to have ungrammatical, sloppy briefs.” Thus, clean, precise, and well-constructed sentences and citations can correlate to sound legal arguments, but have the opposite effect with poorly constructed writing. On a larger scale, a positive first impression made via an initial pleading can parlay into elevated judgments of subsequent filings, and your case as a whole.