Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Clarify the Question
Susannah Tredwell

Summer students have just started at my firm. One of the things that we emphasize in training is that if they don’t understand what they have been asked to do, they need to go back to the lawyer and clarify the question. While it may be embarrassing to have to go back and ask, it’s far better than discovering that . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

–Ice, –Ise, –Ize
Neil Guthrie

Verb endings: a small but tricky point. If you’re from the USA, the practice (noun) of law is practiced (verb) by lawyers. If you’re from the UK, the practice is practised. Here in Canada, we see both verb forms – but preferred usage (by me, anyway) is to go British. …

Practice

How to Take a Free, Simple, and Great . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Subscribe to Government & Court Press Releases
Bronwyn Guiton

Press releases are a good source of free current awareness alerts and a legitimate resource for understanding the intent of new legislation. I’m sharing a few of my favourite sources for timely and helpful press releases today. I’m a BC law librarian so I use these three sources often. Please share your own favourite sources for . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Go Gender Neutral
Neil Guthrie

Strive for neutrality, or at least balance. As Richard Wydick suggests in his excellent Plain English for Lawyers, ‘many readers, both women and men, will be distracted and perhaps offended if you use masculine terms to refer to people who are not necessarily male.’ Wydick also notes that it’s equally distracting to use ‘clumsy efforts to avoid masculine terms’, or . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Don’t Forget Google Scholar
Susannah Tredwell

Google Scholar is a useful way to start a search of academic literature, particularly for subject areas for which you have limited or no access to the relevant databases. Google Scholar has indexed an impressive number of academic articles; a 2014 study estimated that it contained just under 100 million English-language academic documents. …

Practice

Breathe Life Into Your . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Think About Lay-Out and Design
Neil Guthrie

If you’re lucky, you’ll have marketing or communications folks who will prepare your piece for publication, but there are some design aspects you should be thinking about too. White space: Dense blocks of text are hard on the eyes. Too many words will repel readers. Think about breaking up long paragraphs and sentences so your piece is easier . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Don’t Forget About SITE: Search
Bronwyn Guiton

In what is becoming a biennial tradition here on SLAW Tips, I want to remind everyone about SITE: search, one of the advanced search tools offered by Google. Google’s SITE: search allows you to search just one website for specific terms. This can be useful when a site’s own search form is disappointing or missing altogether. …

Practice . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Practice

Tackle That (In)Box
Elizabeth Mah

When people ask “How are you doing?” I think most people answer on behalf of their inboxes. “Full”, some might say, or “Crazy” say most as they glance at the notice saying that there are 99,999 email messages in their inbox and then glance at the clock indicating the time remaining in their day. …

Research & Writing

Think of Your Reader . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Use a Checklist
Susannah Tredwell

As a great fan of checklists I highly recommend Atul Gawande’s book on the subject, The Checklist Manifesto. In his book Gawande makes the case that a checklist is valuable even if you have done a specific task many times before and know exactly what you are doing. He illustrates this point by giving examples of how checklists are used . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Capitals, Defined Terms and Acronyms
Neil Guthrie

Go easy with these. Capitals. Where there are too many words with capital letters, the visual effect is jarring and over-emphatic. Don’t succumb to what Bryan Garner calls ‘the unfortunate tendency toward contagious capitalization’ in legal writing. Above all, Resist the Temptation to Capitalise Important Words, which can look a bit Winnie the Pooh (‘I have been Foolish . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Practice

Welcome the New Tipsters…
David Bilinsky

Changes are coming to SlawTips! I would like to introduce our new enhanced team of practice tipsters. Our team will now include: Michael McCubbin, Vancouver; Andrea Cannavina, New York City; Stacey Gerrard, Halifax; Sandra Bekhor, Toronto; Mark Morris, Toronto; Elizabeth Mah, Vancouver; Bjorn (Barney) Christianson, Portage la Prairie; Ian Hu, Toronto. …

Research & Writing

Use LexBox for Case Law Monitoring . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Banish Business Jargon
Neil Guthrie

This could be a long one, but I’ll restrain myself as much as possible. And I admit, not all of these are strictly writing tips. Many aspects of the working day are, well, kind of boring. In response, people in business seem to want to jazz up the English language – but the result , more often than not, is . . . [more]