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July 15, 2009
Ray Ward: Real lawyers don't worship "forms".
The problem really isn’t with forms themselves. A good set of forms, properly used, can save time and serve as helpful guides.
The problems arise with what contract-drafting guru Ken Adams calls “uncritical regurgitation”—the slavish adherence to poor or obsolete forms.
--Ray Ward, New Orleans, January 29, 2009
Thinking and Writing Well. Back in January, in "The Vampires of Legal Writing", Ray Ward, our erudite friend and appellate lawyer in the Big Easy, noted that over-reliance on forms "tends to perpetuate bad legal writing." Hear, hear. WAC? thinks "forms" for agreements, exhibits, schedules, opinion letters, discovery requests, and just about anything a lawyer devises and writes, are more trouble than they're worth; a doorway to stale thinking, omissions, and mistakes.
Forms are presumptively bad. Forms, unless used the right way, will turn you into just more unhappy American Law Cattle.
If your practice is the least bit challenging, forms just get in the way. They are bad--especially if allowed to become the main event. Clients, of course, and as usual, are the big losers.
See also Ward's "How to Write for the Client": "By eliminating the legalese and communicating like a human being, a lawyer can produce client-centered writing: something primarily for the client; something the client can readily understand."
Posted by Rob Bodine at July 15, 2009 11:59 PM