Professional Writing for Lawyers: Skills and Responsibilities

This book is an introduction to integrating professional ethics into legal writing. By providing an ethical context for all forms of legal writing, Johns introduces the reader to the responsibilities attached to every document a lawyer authors. The book starts the reader off in law practice, stressing the need for ethical responsibility, civility, and professionalism in the practice of law. Professional Writing for Lawyers is designed to complement Richard Wydick's Plain English for Lawyers. By using these books together, readers will learn to approach writing as a process of thinking, outlining, drafting, revising, and editing to produce a final draft. To help the reader understand this process, several examples are rewritten, integrating the principles of Plain English that teach the reader to develop a clear, concise, and readable style.