One of the best sources for legal writing is Irving Younger’s Persuasive Writing. I have carried this book around with me since my last days of law school. Younger’s words on the necessity of clarity never grow old: There is one characteristic a lawyer’s language must possess, no matter the lawyer’s role or the purposes for which the lawyer deploys language, however; that characteristic is clarity. A lawyer’s language should express the lawyer’s thought with the pellucidity of a glass of spring water. If it does not, to that extent the lawyer’s language is a confession of incompetence. Clarity of language comes with clarity of thought. The question that precedes the writing of each word, phrase and sentence of a lawyer’s language is, “What…