Don't you just love the letters that arrive from opposing lawyers throwing anything and everything at you, the lawyer and the client? Here at divorcewise we wonder what that is about? Does it serve to satisfy an ego, and if so does it satisfy the ego of the lawyer or the client? Or is it simply a believe that he (or she) who shouts the loudest and throws the largest pile of mud wins? If so, boy......
What happened to good old fashioned respect and courtesy? And why do some lawyers feel the need to wade in with their own opinion? How relevant is the phrase 'in the writer's view'? All of us at divorcewise agree that giving your own opinion as the lawyer for a client does nothing to resolve the dispute of the clients, nor does it look or sound professional. Sometimes client's of ours form the view something must be going on between client and lawyer if correspondence continues to contain statements about i 'in the writer's view'.
Shouldn't letters be short and to the point? Who reads five pages of insult anyway?
The current law society journal seems to have an article on effective legal writing in it. We have not read the entire article but glanced at the summary points in the centre of the article, which to the best of our recollection said something about the first twenty five percent of any document drafted being of no use (or words to that effect). And that using three main points goes a long way to writing a good persuasive document (no doubt this would apply to a letter as well).
Next time you sit down to write a mud slinging letter, offering your own opinion we urge you to stop and pause; will it really add anything to the document? Will it make it more persuasive? Probably not.
Perhaps we can all try to become better creators of documents and more persuasive in our writing.
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