R.I.P, Marvin Chirelstein.

Just heard the sad news.  Marvin Chirelstein made Federal Income Tax comprehensible for me when I was a lost law student, trying to figure out how "philosophy of tax" (interesting, and the bulk of the course that I took) meshed with "actual Federal Income Tax" (which is what I knew would be on the exam).  I read his Federal Income Tax paperback (now in its 12th edition) and made a vow to myself that if I made it through the course with a decent grade, I'd name a child after him. (That little factoid probably explains part of the reason that Jeff and I don't have kids:  Marvin Rapoport Van Niel?  Chirelstein Rapoport Van Niel?  See--that's quite a burden to put on a little tyke.)  Lighthearted remembrance aside, I just wanted to go on record to say that Professor Chirelstein was one of the greats, and I know he'll be missed.

Happy birthday, John Cleese!

And here is his lecture on how to be creative.

Some great tips on writing.

See here.

My latest piece came out in Green Bag.

See here.  The essay links the original plans for NYU's law school with current issues in legal education.

An update for editors everywhere.

From my buddy Kathleen Lyon, some thoughts about editing (here) in response to my frustrated screed (here). 

Thanks, Conglomerate!

For the shout-out (here).

Mixed thoughts about this post on Above the Law.

I do get what Above the Law is saying here, and I also take the point of Anonymous's comment about my screed against bad law review editing, but I've also seen the difficulty that some law students have in transitioning from college to professional school.  There has to be a good way to teach them that the little things matter.

And I'm now, after 20+ years on the job, at the point at which I require those who write papers for me to execute this affidavit.

Am I a curmudgeon?  Yep.  Do I think that some clear expectations might help students become more professional?  I sure hope so.

UPDATE (2/11/14):  Thanks, Above the Law, for including me in your non-sequiturs yesterday!

Thanks, Above the Law!

Appreciated the shout-out!

Dear law review editors everywhere--a few words of advice.

I'm in the process of reading page proofs from two different journals, both involving symposia, and I want to explain why one journal did a superb job of editing my work and one didn't.  If you're a law review editor who follows this advice, you're likely to have very happy authors.  If you don't, you might end up being the focus of comments like this one.

1. Respect the author's voice.  You're not the author.  The person whose article you accepted is the author, and every author has his or her own style of writing.  Don't futz with that style.  It's one thing to tell an author that something that she wrote is unclear, or that a transition doesn't make sense, or that you see a hole in her argument.  Those are wonderful things to do, and telling an author those things makes the article stronger.  Deciding to "fix" the way that the author writes because you don't like her style is not a wonderful thing to do.  (We're just going to change back all of your "fixes" anyway, so both of us will end up feeling frustrated.)
2. If you do make changes, make sure that the changes are obvious when you return the revisions to the author.  It's annoying to see an article that's been revised so many times by various editors that the "track changes" feature has become worthless.  The failure to indicate what language was changed from the author's original language just delays your editorial process because it slows down the author's review of your edits.  Oh, and mere formatting changes?  Those are different--go ahead and "accept" those changes so that we don't have to spend time doing that ourselves.*  I doubt that any of us care how you format your footnotes or what font you use, as long as the substance of the article is correct.
3. If you make changes, get them right.  Please don't "fix" the author's writing by inserting language that changes the author's meaning, or by mis-citing things, or by making mistakes in spelling or grammar.  Although it's possible that you write more clearly than does your author,  it's not probable.  We write for a living; you're learning how to write as lawyers.  The odds are in our favor that we were right the first time.
4. Be timely.  If you need a revision turned around by a specific date, work backwards from that date and give the author plenty of time to look at your proposed changes--and make sure that the author has actually received your revisions.  If you don't hear from an author by, say, a week after you've sent out a draft, follow up.  Email glitches can happen.
5. Be accurate.  Don't make mistakes in cite-checking.  One of the best things that law reviews do is train students to be anal-retentive about certain things.  We want you to obsess over whether cross-references match.  We want you to be disturbed when a quotation mark is missing or a parenthetical statement has an open parenthesis but not a closed one.  We want you to check to see if every footnote is internally consistent.  We want you to be master proofreaders.  Talent at obsessing over tiny details will serve you well as a lawyer.  If, though, you miss obvious things, or if you alter things that actually were correct, we lose confidence in your abilities.
6. Help the author "plug" the final version.  Some law reviews tweet about their issues; some go so far as to send copies to other professors whose work figured prominently in the article itself.  These creative ideas go a long way toward making an author so happy with your work that he or she looks forward to placing another article with your law review.

When the collaborative process between an author and her editors results in a better article than the one that the author had originally drafted, everyone wins. 

____________________
* Better yet:  give us two versions.  One should be the "track changes" version with the formatting changes already accepted, and one should be the version that shows every single thing that you changed from the author's own draft.

A timeless essay on writing by George Orwell.

Here.  It's just marvelous.

Today's Throw Grammar From the Train is about "utilize"--yay!

See here.  I've been riding this particular hobbyhorse for a long time.  My guess is that people use "utilize" to sound "educated." 

If I can get lawyers to realize that they write more clearly when they write as simply as possible, I will have done something useful.

Some great new tools by my buddy Walter Effross.

Here and here.  I think they're both "must reads" for law bloggers.  Bravo, Walter!

Darn it! I missed National Grammar Day.

Yep:  apparently March 4 is National Grammar Day.  I missed it, but I sure love these two posts:  here and here.  I am someone who surreptitiously erases the mistaken apostrophe from chalk menu listings.  I'm even someone who's been known to write to major newspapers to chide them for bad writing (and bad proofreading).

But I'm experiencing my comeuppance:  right now, I'm dealing with a first round of edits from a good law review that is determined to make my writing style much more formal.  The editors have taken out every single contraction.  (I'm putting every single one back in--which has taken me several hours so far today.) So, in honor of National Grammar Day (a day late), my reaction to my current page proofs:

Dear Law Review Editors from Every U.S. Law Review:

Please let your authors use their own writing styles.  Please do not hew to the mistaken notion that your authors must use clunky and unnecessarily formal writing in order for your law review to be taken seriously by its readers.  All you're doing with these nitpicking edits is ticking off your authors.  Our names are on our articles, not yours, and trust me:  we know how we write, and we like our writing enough to do it for a living.  When you've written for a living for over two decades (three decades, in my case, if you count the time before I entered academia), you'll understand how we feel. 

I've decided that, in every new publication contract, I'm going to insert a provision barring the law review editors from removing my contractions or changing my writing style.  Enough is enough.

Now, go check your commas and apostrophes to prepare for next year's National Grammar Day.

Here's to contractions.

Loved John Kang's post over at The Faculty Lounge (here).  I've been known to yank (invited) pieces from journals when they mess too much with my writing style.  We seem to have been giving law students the notion that only stuffy writing is good writing.  We need to remind them that clear writing is good writing, and that one doesn't have to be overly formal to be a good writer.  My point when I yank an article is that the editors' names aren't going on the author byline, and that I've earned the right to write in my own voice.*

So here's to John Kang's piece!

* Am I a diva?  Yes.  Yes, I am.  But at least I'm a self-aware diva.

Yes, sometimes I stay awake worrying about this issue.

See today's WSJ (here).

Hat tip to my buddy Kathleen Lyon for finding this gem!

See here on writing. Thanks, KEL!

For those writers with spelling "issues"

See this. Hat tip to my buddy Scott Chase for sending it to me.

I told you that judges and lawyers care about good writing....

See here. Bravo, Judge Kressel! And a hat tip to one of my best friends (who's going to be unnamed in this post) for pointing this notice out to me), and to the Wall Street Journal Blog, for the whole story (here).