According to the current newsletter of the ABA's Council of Appellate Lawyers, Susan Hanley Kosse and David T. ButleRitchie (7th down at that link) will publish an article about legal writing skills in the AALS Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 53, issue 1 (late March 2003). The authors conducted a survey that "asked members of the profession—attorneys, judges and law professors—what they thought of the writing skills of their colleagues." In a fascinating recap of the survey results, the authors reveal among other things that 57.3% of the respondents did not feel that new members of the profession write well when compared with more senior members. In the forthcoming article, the authors promise to "examine in detail possible reasons why lawyers do not write well," including, "New lawyers do not write well because of the Generation X factor."**
That ought to be interesting.
*"You're Lost Between 'Baby Boomer' And 'Generation X' If..." [via Whole Wheat Bagel] Yeah, I remember when Jordache jeans with a flat-handled comb in the back pocket was cool, what of it???
**I did alert the Council of Appellate Lawyers to the rather humorous (considering the subject matter) typo currently present in the text quoted (sans typo) above. With any luck by the time you click through it will be but a dim memory.
Saturday, March 15, 2003 at 9:36AM 