SUCCEED WITH LEGAL WRITING by Senator Ihenyen

SUCCEED WITH LEGAL WRITING by Senator Ihenyen

Today, there is little or nothing a lawyer can do without writing; for judges, absolutely nothing. Writing well is the most critical and yet the rarest skill in law. To succeed in the legal profession, writing well is key.

 In his book, Legal Writing Fundamentals (2014), Chinua Asuzu, the CEO of the Write House and expert in legal writing, puts it this way: “Today’s legal world is writing-biased. Written argument is required at trial and appellate courts. Writing also dominates arbitration and alternative dispute resolution.”

Everyone needs sound training in legal writing. But most lawyers and judges do not think so. Many senior lawyers, particularly, don’t think they need any legal-writing training. At best, they recommend it to their junior colleagues. “Who needs legal-training at this stage!?” one senior lawyer within the premises of the Lagos State High Court, Igbosere, once remarked dismissively.
But do you know that most lawyers who think they write well do not? Carl Felsenfeld, a learned writer, eloquently wrote in a U.S. Business Law Journal, “Lawyers have two common failings. One is that they do not write well, and the other is that they think they do.”
In Nigeria, the foundation for sound legal writing has never been strong. Only a negligible number of Faculties across the country teach it. Most law teachers lack the skills required to train law students–even in the Law School. 
As a pioneer writer, teacher, and consultant on legal writing in Nigeria, Chinua Asuzu believes that “…this (the lack of legal-writing training) is not a recent deficiency, Nigerian lawyers at all levels (including judges, legal-department heads, partners, professors, and SANs) generally write poorly.”
Well, now you know.
International best practices now require lawyers to prepare legal documents in clear language. It’s high time lawyers embraced open communication with their clients. This enables lay clients, readers, or users easily access legal documents. It’s important that they do. We need to realise that law is not just for lawyers alone. Law is for everyone. And it’s good business to write well. It’s like dressing smart, and more.
Writing well is like making good music, elegantly and beautifully. If music is the food of love, words must be the food of law. And what is music without being played; what are words without being written. A fine musician must play beautifully; a sound lawyer must write elegantly.
And if she is diligent in her craft, she will stand before kings.

And this is why I am proud to be part of the The Write House team. Since 2012, the legal-writing consuting and training firm has been filling the writing gap in Nigerian law. As Africa’s frontline team of legal-writing coaches, consultants, experts, mentors, and teachers, our experience has been that lawyers, judges, and legal personnel trained in legal writing benefit immensely. It improves the chances of professional success.
To succeed with sound legal writing, you need to acquire relevant skills. Mainly culled from The Write House Corporate Profile, I list 5 career-enhancing benefits of legal writing training as follows:
Legal writing training enhances your efficiency. For organizations, legal-writing training is sound economics. It improves economies of scale by enhancing efficiency and utilization. Fewer hands will complete more tasks in fewer hours.
It deepens your branding, credibility, employability, and ethos. For both individual attorneys and organizations, legal-writing training deepens branding, credibility, employability, and ethos. Good writing is directly proportional to good business manners, professional image, and brand differentiation.
Legal-writing training helps you write clearly and effectively, commanding respect. 
Trainees learn to prepare legal documents in plain English, dropping the legalese and verbosity that plague much legal writing. Refreshingly clear legal writing retains the majesty of legal language and commands the respect of modern readers.
It improves your expressive and persuasive skills. Express yourself and persuade effectively. Our training boosts trainees’ expressive capacity and persuasive force.
It exposes you to international best practices in legal writing. Heads, HR departments, and partners in law firms and legal departments should assess writing skills of applicants for legal positions. They cannot conduct this assessment unless they themselves are exposed to international best practices in legal writing, as  taught by The Write House.
Legal writing is an art. It is also a science. Excellent legal writing skills does not only give you an amazing competitive edge; it best assures a successful legal career.
Senator Ihenyen
Profile
Senator Iyere Ihenyen is an Associate at Assizes Lawfirm and The Write House – www.writehouseng.com. Senator practices in Lagos. He enjoys writing. He has special interest in Intellectual Property and Information Technology, two areas he writes on at Nigerian Law Today as a founding contributor. Senator can be reached at senator@writehouseng.com

TIPS FOR BETTER LEGAL DRAFTING SKILLS

TIPS FOR BETTER LEGAL DRAFTING SKILLS

“The brief of arguments of the appellants
consisted of forty-two pages. It was unnecessarily long, windy, confused,
confusing, repetitive, and it contained too many narratives rather than
arguments
….. The brief of arguments
of the appellants in this appeal is a clear example of how not to draft a brief
of arguments”
.   
         
Abiru, J.C.A.
Nagebu Co (Nig.) Ltd v. Uniy Bank Plc [2014]7 NWLR(Part 1405) 42


The above quote is the comment of
a Honourable Judge on the brief of argument of one of the parties in the suit,
well if you cannot recognise one, this is a classic bench slap and I wonder how
the lawyer must have felt listening to the Justice in open court, if it were
me, I will ask the floor to split open and swallow me whole have been slightly
embarrassed, well maybe not slightly. 
In the legal profession, there
happens to be a lot of writing, that’s why one of the invaluable assets that a
counsel must always possess is good drafting skills. Briefs of arguments contain
the story of a party on which the courts Justices are called upon to
adjudicate. Like all good stories, the arguments in brief must flow; they must
be consistent, they must be concise, they must be comprehensive, they must be
comprehensible; and they must be accurate. 
Some of the eternal qualities of
a good brief of arguments are brevity and precision, no one wants to read pages
of unnecessary information that will not help a client or like some lawyers do,
include lines from popular poems or dramas. A brief of argument must not be too
short as to leave out the essentials and must not be too long as to become
otiose. The goal must be to achieve maximum brevity consistent with accuracy
and clarity. 
A good brief does not allow for
verbosity and must be a succinct statement of a party’s argument in the appeal.
A well crafted brief makes for joyful reading while a badly crafted one is
tedious and laborious to understand and it is like a bad story which leaves an
audience disgruntled, disgusted and unhappy. This point was well made by the
Supreme Court in Ports & Cargo Handling services Company Limited & 3 Ors v.
Migfo Nigeria Ltd. & Anor (2013) 3 NWLR (Pt. 1333) 555 at para. G where
Galadima
, JSC stated thus:
“A brief of argument has the connotation of a really concise and succinct
expression of the appellant’s complaint and the respondent’s reaction on the
issue or issues presented to the court for consideration. Clarity, simplicity
and directness of expression are the hallmarks of a good brief. ‘Although the
rules of the Supreme Court do not limit a party to a number of pages in a brief
of argument, the brief should not be unnecessarily voluminous and contain
repetitive arguments of the issues settled.”
Counsel must understand that a
long and windy brief is discouraging to the court Justices saddled with the
determination of an appeal and can only amount to disservice to the cause of a
litigant. Litigation is not a long essay competition where success is
determined by the length of the brief of arguments and it has been said that repetition
does not improve an argument – Uwazurike v. Nwachukwu (2013) 3 NWLR (Pt.
1342) 503
The court of Appeal, speaking on
the necessary drafting skills a counsel must possess, said in SCOA
(Nig) plc v. Danbatta (2002) 13 NWLR (Pt. 785) 461 at 472 paras. D –F
thus:
“Drafting is an important tool in advocacy. A solicitor who could not
resent his client’s case clearly in the brief, if it is a case in the appellate
courts, or in the pleadings, if it is a case before the High Court or Federal
High Court, could not adequately represent the interest of his clients. An
otherwise good case is destroyed and lost by bad pleadings, …counsel should
pay more attention to drafting as no counsel could be good and make marks in
advocacy if he is poor in drafting mechanism”.  
As a lawyer,
being excellent at brief writing sounds like an awesome advantage but it takes
a lot more than wishes to make it happen. There is no substitute for committing
to perfecting both your written and spoken English by reading more, learning
new words and writing over and over and over again. Don’t forget that practise
makes perfect.