Great Legal Writing: Lessons from Literature

• Date: 01 January 2023

179

Great Legal Writing: Lessons om Literature

JACK HERON*

Great Legal Writing: Lessons om Literature by Max Barrett (Globe Law and

Business 2023)

What constitutes great legal writing? We within the profession can probably all

think of examples we have encountered in our careers – a clear and authoritative

judgment, a straightforward and precise piece of advice, or a persuasive and

engaging set of submissions. However, like any skill acquired over years of

professional practice, great legal writing is a hard thing to teach – for many, it

improves somewhat with time and experience, but remains of roughly the same

stylistic quality. In this excellent primer on the art and cra of legal writing, Mr

Justice Max Barrett seeks to encourage the reader to pay closer attention to their

legal writing and the skills and principles involved, and thus to write better.

Barrett1 makes it clear that Great Legal Writing is not an instruction manual, but

rather a discussion of the principles of writing discussed by een great writers,

and an exploration of the relevance of these ‘lessons from literature’ to the cra of

legal writing. To this end, each chapter explores the insights of a particular author

on the art of writing and how these might be applicable to legal writers, ending

with a number of ‘key propositions’ which are compiled in a notional ‘code of good

legal writing’ at the end of the book. Barrett suggests that time-poor readers read

these key propositions and the aerword to get an idea of the book. is approach

could yield some insights that a reader in a hurry might be able incorporate into

their own writing, but it would be a shame to miss out on the majority of the book,

which adds invaluable context to these propositions and gives a sense of why one

might want to incorporate a particular principle.

e author’s foreword does not designate a specic audience for the book beyond

simply those who engage in ‘legal writing’. is is a broader remit than his previous

book, a primer on judgment-writing,2 which was understandably aimed mainly

at judges, quasi-judicial decision-makers and academics. However, while written

judgments constitute the largest body of publicly-available examples of legal

writing, ‘legal writing’ comes in many dierent forms, and so not all of Barrett’s

propositions will apply equally to every side of the profession. Recommendations

* BCL (Hons) (University College Dublin); Solicitor Commercial Real Estate, Matheson LLP;

member of the Editorial Board for Volume 22 of the Hibernian Law Journal. Any views or opinions

expressed in this review are the personal views and opinions of the author.

1 Editorial note: As Great Legal Writing is written by Mr Justice Barrett in an extrajudicial capacity,

this review dispenses with his judicial title.

2 Max Barrett, e Art and Cra of Judgment-Writing: A Primer for Common Law Judges (Globe Law

and Business, 2022).