All Our Tips
Endangered Species Alert: Correct Use of the Apostrophe
You may have seen the news that John Richards, the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, has decided to call it quits after 18 years of fighting for the correct use of the troublesome punctuation mark.
Part of the reason is that Richards, a retired journalist, is 96 and needs to scale back his activities.
But he also feels that ‘ignorance and laziness have won’, his efforts over the years having proved so much tilting at windmills.
He may have a point: my phone’s autocorrect feature assumes that its must always be it’s, and I routinely encounter things like keeping up with the Jones’ and Closed Monday’s.
With John Richards’s retirement, the apostrophe lacks protection.
Does it matter? It can.
There was heated debate in Ghana earlier this year over the name of a new holiday celebrating the country’s path to independence. Was it to be Founder’s Day or Founders’ Day?
The first would have focused attention on Ghana’s first post-colonial leader, Kwame Nkrumah; the second, on the broader movement that brought about independence.
One small mark has the power, if used correctly, to honour an entire generation.
Terms for Associates Who Won’t Make Partner but Who Are Allowed to Stick Around
The old, Darwinian rule for associates was ‘up or out’, meaning that if you weren’t going to be asked to join the partnership, you’d be more or less politely shown the door.
Some firms still do it that way, but not all. Terminology varies, but the most common term in my neck of the woods for someone who’ll never have a corner office is Senior Associate.
Counsel is also used for associates not on the partner track, but also for lawyers past retirement age but still profitable or prestigious enough to keep on board. Counsel is also used for senior lateral hires who are not immediately made partners, although that often follows after a sort of probationary period.
In the US, there is a wider variety of nomenclature. The grey-haired types are described as being Of Counsel, which has been turned into an unfortunate bastard noun (‘We have six distinguished Of Counsels at our firm’). For associates who aren’t on the partner track, these titles are apparently seen on US business cards:
- Career Associate
- Permanent Associate
- Staff Attorney
- Practice Group Attorney
- Department Attorney
- Team Attorney
- Innovative Staffing Attorney
- Agile Counsel
The last two sound bizarre: don’t you want all your lawyers to be agile, at least mentally? and is every other job assignment unimaginative? Career Associate and Permanent Associate are descriptive but a bit tragic (career-limited, stuck in a rut) – and Permanent may imply a level of job security which no associate should expect. Staff Attorney suggests in-house counsel to me, but maybe that’s the idea. The others have a Knowledge Management feel to them, but that may accurately reflect the work this type of lawyer ends up doing. In the UK, this would be a Professional Support Lawyer or PSL, in Canada a KM Lawyer (if not a Senior Associate). In light of that KM-ish category, Agile Counsel may refer to Agile, the project-management process, rather than agile (the normal adjective). That makes a bit more sense, but as a job description it would baffle all but initiates…
Bookmarking Web Pages in Lexbox
Administrator’s note: thanks to Lexum for sharing this tip.
Do you know you can save links pointing to any site of interest with Lexbox? The bookmarking feature of Lexbox is available for this purpose. The “New Bookmark” button is located at the bottom of the page of your Lexbox account.
It couldn’t be more simple: chose your preferred folder in your Lexbox account. Click the orange button titled “New Bookmark”. A dialog box appears. Copy the URL of your choice from your browser navigation bar, and paste it in the box. No more looking for your file information from one place to another. Lexbox stores your research in one place, even third party website pages.
This feature will be familiar to long time users who remember the Lexbox Google Chrome extension.
Celebrate Success
The holidays are just around the corner. Everyone looks forward to the cards, lunches, gifts, parties and general good cheer this time of the year. Maybe in some small way, it makes up for the cold!
So, here’s a thought to take all that goodwill up a notch. Why not use your holiday events as a platform to celebrate success? Whether it’s with your partners, your staff or your clients.
Here are some ideas to get you thinking about this:
- Have you made new connections this year? Can you get specific about that eg how many connections, how were the connections made or how did these connections add value to your practice…
- Have any of your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) improved this year? Profit, revenue or volume?
- Have you changed something about your services? Do you have any feedback or data about how well this change was received by your clients or staff?
- Have you adopted a new process or technology that resulted in greater efficiency?
- Have you made any new hires recently? Did they benefit from your onboarding process? Or did you not even need to hire because your retention is so solid? Celebrate that.
Don’t make the mistake of underestimating how motivating discussions about a job well done can be. They can create opportunity to acknowledge others for their work and dedication.
And if having a positive experience using concrete data about your firm’s performance leads to an appetite for greater insight about how well the practice is running… even better!
‘This Matter Is Very Confidential’
This cautionary note was included (in red, boldface type!) in one of the e-mail notices that go round at my firm, notifying lawyers of prospective clients and asking if there would be any conflicts in acting for them.
Some matters may be more sensitive or interesting or salacious or newsworthy than others, but as a matter of law and legal ethics they can’t be more (or less) confidential.
As lawyers we owe the same duty of confidentiality to each client, and the standard is as high as it gets.
As a matter of English grammar, the very confidential warning is as bad as it gets. It’s like saying something is very unique. It’s unique (or confidential) or it isn’t. These adjectives are absolutes.
Or, as a partner once said to me of a research task, ‘This is somewhat urgent’. I was about to reply, ‘Oh, so it isn’t urgent’, but, anticipating a sense-of-humour failure, kept quiet and just got on with the job.
Finding Federal Orders in Council
Thanks to Jason Wong of McCarthy Tétrault LLP for the inspiration for this tip.
The Privy Council Office has created an online database that allows users to search for federal Orders in Council (OICs) made between 1990 and the present.
If you cannot retrieve your OIC from the database, you can request it by emailing the Privy Council Office directly at [email protected]. If the OIC is available, it will be emailed directly to you (usually within one working day); if not available, you will have to check with Library and Archives Canada (LAC).
LAC has digitized microfilm copies of orders in council from 1867 to 1916. You can search the Orders-in-Council database by going to https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/orders-council/Pages/orders-in-council.aspx.
If your Order in Council is available neither from the Privy Council Office nor through the database you will have to contact LAC directly to get a copy.
#Detox: Putting the Smartphone Away
Smartphones provide lawyers with constant availability and the convenience of responding to queries and communications from any location at any time. But our devices can also be a source of distraction and addiction that discourage productivity and negatively impact our mental health.
A recent survey by Deloitte found that the average person checks their smartphone 52 times a day, while another study found the average person spends more than 3 hours on their phone daily. My own phone tells me that I receive an average of 78 notifications each day, causing a daily average of 73 “pickups”—each one interrupting workflow and concentration.
Making an active effort to reinforce self-control and limit our smartphone use can go a long way to ensuring we control our devices and our devices don’t control us. Dr. Gabrielle Golding, a lecturer with the University of Adelaide Law School, recommends lawyers pursue “digital detox” by scheduling predictable time away from smartphones and computers each week, slowly acclimatizing oneself to feeling “disconnected”, refraining from using any digital devices in bed, and taking up a non-technological hobby.
It’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with applications such as iPhone’s Screen Time and Android’s Digital Wellbeing functions, which allow users to set limits on when and how they use their smartphone. Blocks of phone-free time can be set in advance, or limits can be placed on certain applications. These applications also provide daily summaries of just how much time a user spends on individual applications—the results of which may surprise you.
Shawn Erker (@ShawnErker) is Legal Writer & Content Manager at LAWPRO.
Plain Language for Lawyers
My discovery of Richard Wydick’s Plain Language for Lawyers was serendipitous.
I had started sending out weekly writing tips by e-mail at my firm and was in constant need of new material (and I still am).
Someone on my street had left a box of books at the kerbside, for passers-by to take what appealed to them. On the top of the pile was the fifth edition of Wydick’s excellent book.
Its messages are simple and important:
- omit surplus words
- use base verbs, not nominalisations
- prefer the active voice
- use short sentences
- arrange your words with care
- choose your words with care
- avoid elegant quirks
- punctuate carefully
Richard Wydick died in 2016, and I was very grateful to receive permission from his family and publisher to quote from the fifth edition in my own book on legal writing (which collected those weekly emails).
A sixth edition of Plain Language for Lawyers has now appeared thanks to Amy E. Sloan of the Baltimore School of Law.
It preserves the basic structure and ‘classic features’ of the 5th, but adds a new chapter on document design, updates to some of the material and new exercises.
Recommended reading for all legal writers. And if you can’t find a free copy among a neighbour’s discards, it’s only US$25 from Carolina Academic Press.
I’m not leaving either edition by the side of the road.
And I’m hoping I can cite Wydick 6th in the second edition of Guthrie’s Guide.
Thanks!
I used to work with someone who might fairly be described as curmudgeonly.
This person detests people who reply to an e-mail with a one-word Thanks.
Needless replies are a bit annoying, but it’s also hard to know when to terminate an e-mail exchange.
The advice I give to law students in my seminar on e-mail in a professional setting is to err on the side of politeness, especially in relation to more senior peeps.
Even at the risk of irritating a curmudgeon.
Fancy for the Sake of Being Fancy
‘Keep it simple’ is good advice – but advice that many lawyers fail to heed.
As soon as I am able
Seen in automatic out-of-office e-mail replies or heard on voicemail.
There is nothing wrong with as soon as I can, and it certainly sounds less pretentious.
For the avoidance of doubt
This phrase is pompous, no doubt about that.
It also indicates that you needed to explain things better in the first place.
Don’t admit failure: avoid it.
Iteration
Someone recently e-mailed me the latest iteration of the presentation.
So much fancier than a good old draft or version.
But seriously, how much iterating do you really do?
And an iterative process is just work that requires more than one step. (Which is to say, most of what we do.)
Thusly
Thus is an adverb, so there is no need to add an adverbial –ly ending just to sound all formal.
And come to think of it, you should avoid thus as well – something simple like like this will work just fine, and will sound more normal.
As for thus far, never.
