A US judge’s stinging criticism of a lawyer’s ability to write concisely has been doing the rounds on the internet over the last few days.
Having criticised the lawyer for exceeding a page-limit of 25 pages, Judge Steven Merryday states…
He then proceeds to heavily edit one of the paragraphs submitted by the lawyer:
Having done so, the judge re-writes the paragraph his own way, reducing it from 125 words to a mere 47.
By eliminating “redundancy, verbosity, and legalism” in the rest of the document, the judge orders the lawyer to trim its length to the original agreed 25 pages. The full order is here.