Better Legal Writing: getting the sentences and tone right
This is an English legal writing programme focused on syntax and style. Formality and other register issues are also looked at. The goal is to improve a Dutch legal professional’s ability to write in English by correcting errors relating to sentence structure, formality, style and politeness. If your legal English still “looks like Dutch”, this is the programme for you. This is not a writing practice course, an advanced course or a drafting course, but everyone will appreciate this module’s thorough and insightful coverage of this difficult area.
“As with practitioners in any discipline, legal writers require more than just rote memorization of various rules and suggestions if they want to become proficient in their craft; they need also to understand why they are being taught to write a certain way. For only then do they possess an adequate conceptual framework to make sense of the individual rules and suggestions they learn.” — Mark K. Osbeck