3 ms·

> The lawyer. Needs walls of text. Lawyer and law professor here: No, no, NO! Wall-of-words text is a sign of a L.O.A.D. — a Lazy Or Arrogant Drafter. I tea

> The lawyer. Needs walls of text. Lawyer and law professor here: No, no, NO! Wall-of-words text is a sign of a L.O.A.D. — a Lazy Or Arrogant Drafter. I teach contract drafting to 3Ls and stress The Two Great Rules of Readability: 1. SSSSP: Short, Simple, Single-Subject Paragraphs. https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes-on-Contract-Drafting-2021-08-21.html#short-sentences https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes-on-Contract-Draftin... 2. BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front. https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes-on-Contract-Drafting-2021-08-21.html#BLUF-rule https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes-on-Contract-Draftin...

pnt12 3y ago
I hate when a long technical document doesn't use BLUF, ie omits a summary at the start with the main topics. There's too much info on the internet, and even in internal documentation: if I have to read half the thing to understand if it's relevant, I'm gonna spend most of my time on irrelevant stuff. This is a problem with asking engineers to document without having a writing culture. I've seen it happen: once it's written down, that's it: it's documented, great work! But we should treat it more like code, with clear divisions of concern s, scopes and even refactors when needed!
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
"The lawyer" is probably a bad name, but I've definitely worked with this sort of person before. "The novelist" might be a better name. Of of my ex-bosses preferred long, well-written emails to just about any other form of communication. He was a really bright guy with a degree in English Literature that somehow stumbled his way into the software industry. When he wanted to start working with a new technology, he'd ingest a small pile of driest textbooks on the subject over the course of a week or so, understand and retain all of it, then start running laps around the folks who had been working with the tech for years. He's still the only engineer I've ever met that preferred learning-by-reading over learning-by-doing.
- auggierose 3y ago
  I also prefer learning by reading. But there are some things you can only learn by doing. I usually don't like and try to avoid technology that I should be able to learn by reading, but which is so *uck*d up, that you can only learn it by doing.
jjeaff 3y ago
You are describing the "good lawyer". Judging by the absolute walls of text given in the terms of service and contracts of almost every big company out there, most lawyers are not "good lawyers".
- dctoedt 3y ago
  I sometimes wonder whether some lawyers intentionally draft wall-of-words text in the hope that the other side's contract reviewer will miss something because of the MEGO Effect (Mine Eyes Glaze Over).
makeitdouble 3y ago
I really love how even the lawyers don't want these gigantic walls of texts they produce. I totally get the walls of text are needed to a point, and we don't have good options to produce succint contracts. It just feels like an everybody lose situation.
- dctoedt 3y ago
  > I totally get the walls of text are needed to a point, and we don't have good options to produce succin[c]t contracts. You're too kind — literally. Wall-of-words text is never needed in a contract. Clients should demand that lawyers do a better job in drafting readable contracts — because readable contracts get signed sooner, thus taking up less of the business people's time to negotiate and freeing them up to focus on other things (not to mention being less costly). </rant> The Two Great Rules of Readability above will get you at least 95% of the way there. Wall-of-words contract language is analogous to spaghetti code in a computer program.
dctoedt 3y ago
Forgot to add the business case for readability: Readable contracts get signed sooner (and, probably, inadvertently-breached less often).
hnfong 3y ago
(Former law student here...) Definitely agree with your approach to drafting, but I think you could be overreacting a bit here. Even the shortest contracts might seem like a "wall of text" to the lay person, and short paragraphs stringed together is a wall of text. At any rate the preferred format in most legal contexts is still "`wall' of text" (whether big or small wall, as opposed to diagrams, spreadsheets, or conversations), which is what I think was the original point.
- dctoedt 3y ago
  > short paragraphs stringed together is a wall of text. "White space is your friend" is another rule I preach to my students. Some 40 years of dealing with contracts has persuaded me that short paragraphs with white space in between them are FAR easier to review and negotiate — which means they get signed sooner, and clients vastly prefer that. > as opposed to diagrams, spreadsheets, or conversations For several years there have been people banging the drum for contracts to include more icons, flow charts, etc., for improved readability. So far, that idea hasn't gotten a lot of traction — IMHO that's because most lawyers barely even know how to use Microsoft Word competently and would have no idea how to create a flow chart or meaningful icon, so they default to writing pure text (which is also the quickest and thus cheapest path to getting a draft onto someone else's desk). About the best I've been able to come up with in this regard, as something that can be done with Word, is to create tables of, e.g., action items, with columns such as "Event | Action | Who | When" — basically, an Intel-style "AR list" [0], or in software, a CASE statement. [0] http://www.nathanzeldes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Effective-Action-Culture.pdf http://www.nathanzeldes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Effec...

pnt12 3y ago

I hate when a long technical document doesn't use BLUF, ie omits a summary at the start with the main topics. There's too much info on the internet, and even in internal documentation: if I have to read half the thing to understand if it's relevant, I'm gonna spend most of my time on irrelevant stuff. This is a problem with asking engineers to document without having a writing culture. I've seen it happen: once it's written down, that's it: it's documented, great work! But we should treat it more like code, with clear divisions of concern s, scopes and even refactors when needed!

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago

"The lawyer" is probably a bad name, but I've definitely worked with this sort of person before. "The novelist" might be a better name. Of of my ex-bosses preferred long, well-written emails to just about any other form of communication. He was a really bright guy with a degree in English Literature that somehow stumbled his way into the software industry. When he wanted to start working with a new technology, he'd ingest a small pile of driest textbooks on the subject over the course of a week or so, understand and retain all of it, then start running laps around the folks who had been working with the tech for years. He's still the only engineer I've ever met that preferred learning-by-reading over learning-by-doing.

auggierose 3y ago
I also prefer learning by reading. But there are some things you can only learn by doing. I usually don't like and try to avoid technology that I should be able to learn by reading, but which is so *uck*d up, that you can only learn it by doing.

jjeaff 3y ago

You are describing the "good lawyer". Judging by the absolute walls of text given in the terms of service and contracts of almost every big company out there, most lawyers are not "good lawyers".

dctoedt 3y ago
I sometimes wonder whether some lawyers intentionally draft wall-of-words text in the hope that the other side's contract reviewer will miss something because of the MEGO Effect (Mine Eyes Glaze Over).

makeitdouble 3y ago

I really love how even the lawyers don't want these gigantic walls of texts they produce. I totally get the walls of text are needed to a point, and we don't have good options to produce succint contracts. It just feels like an everybody lose situation.

dctoedt 3y ago
> I totally get the walls of text are needed to a point, and we don't have good options to produce succin[c]t contracts. You're too kind — literally. Wall-of-words text is never needed in a contract. Clients should demand that lawyers do a better job in drafting readable contracts — because readable contracts get signed sooner, thus taking up less of the business people's time to negotiate and freeing them up to focus on other things (not to mention being less costly). </rant> The Two Great Rules of Readability above will get you at least 95% of the way there. Wall-of-words contract language is analogous to spaghetti code in a computer program.

dctoedt 3y ago

Forgot to add the business case for readability: Readable contracts get signed sooner (and, probably, inadvertently-breached less often).

hnfong 3y ago

(Former law student here...) Definitely agree with your approach to drafting, but I think you could be overreacting a bit here. Even the shortest contracts might seem like a "wall of text" to the lay person, and short paragraphs stringed together is a wall of text. At any rate the preferred format in most legal contexts is still "`wall' of text" (whether big or small wall, as opposed to diagrams, spreadsheets, or conversations), which is what I think was the original point.

dctoedt 3y ago
> short paragraphs stringed together is a wall of text. "White space is your friend" is another rule I preach to my students. Some 40 years of dealing with contracts has persuaded me that short paragraphs with white space in between them are FAR easier to review and negotiate — which means they get signed sooner, and clients vastly prefer that. > as opposed to diagrams, spreadsheets, or conversations For several years there have been people banging the drum for contracts to include more icons, flow charts, etc., for improved readability. So far, that idea hasn't gotten a lot of traction — IMHO that's because most lawyers barely even know how to use Microsoft Word competently and would have no idea how to create a flow chart or meaningful icon, so they default to writing pure text (which is also the quickest and thus cheapest path to getting a draft onto someone else's desk). About the best I've been able to come up with in this regard, as something that can be done with Word, is to create tables of, e.g., action items, with columns such as "Event | Action | Who | When" — basically, an Intel-style "AR list" [0], or in software, a CASE statement. [0] http://www.nathanzeldes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Effective-Action-Culture.pdf http://www.nathanzeldes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Effec...