Conciseness: Why It’s Important And How To Achieve It

August 16, 2022

In recent Writing That Works columns, I focused on precision and clarity, two of the hallmarks of good legal writing. Today’s column is devoted to the third hallmark—conciseness. I deliberately chose to address conciseness last, because I think it’s subordinate to the other two hallmarks; in other words, we shouldn’t sacrifice precision and clarity in the name of conciseness. Nonetheless, once we’re satisfied that our writing is precise and clear, we should certainly go a step further to make sure that it’s also concise.

Three Reasons Why Conciseness Matters

(1)  Concise writing meets the needs of our busy legal readers. The lawyers and judges who read our pleadings, motions, memos, and briefs are usually reading them because they have to, not because they want to. Moreover, they’re usually very busy, and their time is at a premium. We can’t afford to annoy them with verbose writing. As Cicero observed, “When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”

(2)  Concise writing is often necessary. Many courts impose page or word limits on the documents we submit. Conciseness enables us to stay within those limits.  If we don’t, we face possible sanctions; thus, “failure to be concise may be legal malpractice.”[i]

(3)  Concise writing is more powerful. Even in the absence of page or word limits, conciseness is desirable because it makes our writing more powerful. Think about some of the most successful advertising slogans: “Just do it.” “Have it your way.” “You’re in good hands.”  These slogans work because their words pack a punch and because their crispness makes them easy to remember.

Legal writers can take a lesson from advertisers. We want our writing to pack a punch, and we want our readers to easily understand and remember our points. We don’t want “bloated writing”[ii] to obscure our good analysis and arguments. One pair of legal writing experts makes this analogy: “Imagine for a moment that you are at a great steakhouse. It’s a special occasion, so you order the best steak on the menu. When your meal arrives, however, you find that the steak is surrounded by an inch of fat. Appealing? Hardly. The meat itself may be tender and juicy, but you find it hard to appreciate its flavor with all that fat staring up off the plate at you. Why, you wonder, didn’t the chef trim off the fat before your meal was served to you? Wordy writing is like a steak surrounded by fat. It may have great analysis and brilliant arguments, but if you haven’t trimmed the fat, the reader is likely to find the writing unappealing.”[iii]

Three Reasons Why Being Concise Is Difficult

(1) We have a deeply-ingrained tendency toward wordiness. Many of us “cut our writing teeth” on high school and college writing projects where we were asked to “fill pages.” Our professor required us to write a 20-page paper on subject X. However, after covering everything we considered important about subject X, our paper was only 15 pages. So what did we do? We looked for ways to “pad” our writing to stretch the paper to 20 pages. We turned a one-word descriptive adjective into a five- or six-word descriptive phrase. We added sentences that didn’t contribute any new ideas. We looked for “elegant variation” in our phrasing. These techniques became ingrained in our writing process.

These ingrained habits make it very hard for legal writers—especially novices—to be concise. Making matters worse, much of what lawyers read routinely—judicial opinions, other parties’ briefs, etc.—is written by people with the same ingrained habits, so our tendency toward verbosity is continually reinforced.

(2) We like our own writing. After we’ve slaved over a pleading or a memo or a brief for hours or days, it’s hard for us to be objective about our writing. We’ve struggled to find just the right words, just the right phrasing, just the right tone; we’ve written and rewritten and rewritten again, trying to get everything “just right.” We’re often reluctant, then, to take the proverbial red pen to our work. Moreover, our immersion in the writing process can cause us to overlook flaws in the product; our work may contain much wordiness and repetition, but we just can’t see it.

3)  We’re busy, so we don’t have much time to devote to editing for conciseness. One of the most well-known quotes on conciseness is this: “The letter I have written today is longer than usual, because I lacked the time to make it shorter.”[iv] Editing for conciseness takes time—time that we often feel we can’t spare. Fortunately, there are several ways to quickly and effectively check our writing for conciseness; I offer three specific suggestions below.

Three Key Strategies For Achieving Conciseness

Many of the strategies for achieving clarity that I covered in prior columns will also result in achieving conciseness (putting subjects and verbs close together, using active rather than passive voice, avoiding nominalizations, and paraphrasing quotes, for example). Here, I’ve chosen to focus on three additional strategies targeted directly at combating wordiness.

(1)  Eliminate “throat-clearing” phrases. These are introductory phrases that “are mere preludes for the topic to follow,”[v] and they typically add little or nothing to the sentences they precede. They often fall into the pattern “It is ______ that”.  Several legal writing manuals contain good lists of “throat-clearers.”[vi]

We tend to use “throat-clearers” in several situations. First, we use them because we want to emphasize to the reader the import of what follows: “It is clear that,” “It is significant that,” and “It is well-recognized that,” are three common “throat-clearers” of this sort. Second, we use them to tell the reader that she should take note of something: “It should also be noted that” and “It is important to note that” are common examples.[vii] Third, we use them to preface certain arguments that we want to make or that we think the opposing party might make: “It could be argued that” and “Opposing counsel will likely point out that” fall into this category.

The “find and replace” function in your word processing program can locate “throat-clearing” phrases quickly. They can usually be edited out completely, or at least reduced to one word (“Probably” instead of “It is probable that” or “Arguably” instead of “It can be argued that”).

(2) Eliminate long-winded phrases (don’t use three or four words when one word will do). Phrases like in the event that, with reference to, at the present time, and due to the fact that are simply part of many lawyers’ lexicons. Although they’re used habitually, they’re no more effective than their one-word counterparts (if, regarding, now, and because). Again, many legal writing manuals contain helpful lists of common long-winded phrases and their one-word substitutes.[viii] One legal writing expert posits that these “bloated phrases” are “the biggest source of surplusage” in legal writing and thus should be “the first things to look for when you trim your drafts.”[ix] You’ll likely find that if you begin to habitually edit your work to eliminate these phrases, you’ll soon begin to catch them as you draft, and you’ll become a more efficient writer.

(3)  Use “coupled or tripled synonyms” sparingly. Cease and desist. Full and complete. Give, devise, and bequeath. Null, void, and of no effect. Order, adjudge, and decree.  Much legal writing is replete with phrases like these. These phrases—often called “coupled (or tripled) synonyms”—“were useful hundreds of years ago when three languages (French, Latin, and versions of Old English) were used simultaneously on one English island.”[x] And sometimes they are still useful and appropriate; for example, the phrase “ready, willing, and able” is not redundant; “someone could be willing to share a document but not ready because the document has not been located.”[xi] The key is to make sure that each word in the phrase serves a purpose; if not, keep the most precise word and eliminate the others.[xii]

A couple of final points: First, don’t worry too much about being concise in the drafting stage. In the drafting stage, we’re often still thinking through our analysis or argument, and we need to give ourselves the freedom to use the words that best help us do that. Later, we can do a careful edit devoted solely to making sure we’ve communicated our analysis or argument to the reader as concisely as possible. Second, don’t go overboard in your efforts to be concise. There may be situations where it simply takes more words to be very clear and precise. In the end, if you can say, “I’ve been as concise as possible without sacrificing precision or clarity,” you’ve done a good day’s work!

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Laura Graham serves as Professor of Legal Writing and Director of Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research at Wake Forest University School of Law, where she has been teaching since 1999. She was the first recipient of the law school’s Graham Award for Excellence in Teaching Legal Research and Writing, which is named in her honor, and currently serves as president of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Graham is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Wake Forest University School of Law.

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