Today's sessions focused on brief writing and editing. These topics are difficult to condense down into short presentations, but both presenters did a good job with the time allotted.
When writing, we were advised to use emotion to encourage the reader to engage or be involved with our arguments. Compassion is to be preferred over empathy - the latter is exhausting, while the former can be grounds to improve someone's situation.
Our "lede" - our most essential point - should lead every paragraph. Our best, most compelling argument should not be last. Don't bury that point in your brief.
Everything we write should be intentional: organization, word choice, and punctuation. And we should tell our client's story everywhere, even in the table of contents - make those headings fact-laden and interesting.
The editing discussion was fairly wide ranging. Apparently, there's a preference for Century Schoolbook font. ALL CAPS should be avoided everywhere. Write with such clarity that your mother can understand your argument.
One really interesting suggestion made in the editing discussion applies to brief writing: if your record is thin, fill in facts with material drawn from dictionaries, studies, articles, newspapers, etc. "Create" supporting facts in this fashion.
We should not adopt language used by prosecutors or law enforcement. We should use language that is more favorable to our clients. For example, we can place our client's names into quotes about the law: "The Fourth Amendment protects Mr. Smith's right to...." Personalize the law in this fashion.
Again, there was a lot of food for thought.
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