The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (2d Ed.) |  | Authors: Bryan A. Garner, Jeff Newman, Tiger Jackson
Publisher: West
Category: Book
List Price: $44.00
Buy New: $35.00
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Seller: Mercedes Sandoval
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 1746
Media: Spiral-bound
Edition: 2nd Sprl
Pages: 510
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.7 x 1.4
ISBN: 0314168915
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.06634
EAN: 9780314168917
ASIN: 0314168915
Publication Date: July 18, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Provides a comprehensive guide to the essential rules of legal writing. Unlike most style or grammar guides, it focuses on the special needs of legal writers. answering a wide spectrum of questions about grammar and style both rules as well as exceptions. Also gives detailed, authoritative advice on punctuation, capitalization, spelling, footnotes, and citations, with illustrations in legal context. Designed for law students, law professors, practicing lawyers and judges, the work emphasizes the ways in which legal writing differs from other styles of technical writing. Its how to sections deal with editing and proofreading, numbers and symbols, and overall document design.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 (Almost) everything you should have wanted to know about legal writing, but didn't ask September 13, 2007
Timothy B. Mustaine (Wichita, KS United States)
24 out of 24 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful reference work on legal style--comprehensive, authoritative, well organized, and genuinely readable. It covers an incredible range of topics: punctuation, page layout, typography, spelling, grammar, usage, and more. It makes specific stylistic recommendations for many different types of legal documents, including business correspondence, research memos, pleadings, appellate briefs, and judicial opinions, to name just a few. And it's useful for anybody who has anything to do with creating legal documents, from judges and senior lawyers, to raw associates and law students, to legal secretaries; it would even be helpful to pro se litigants (as other reviewers have noted). I really wish that Amazon provided a "look inside" that showed the table of contents - the book covers an amazing amount of ground.
It's too bad that practitioners used to obfuscatory legalese, or who needlessly produce ugly, poorly written, unreadable documents, won't ever buy, much less read, this book. There's a lot of lousy legal writing churned out every day--bad not just in the sense that a writing teacher or design and typography professional wouldn't like it, but bad in the sense of being hard to read and understand and therefore, in the end, unpersuasive. This book is an antidote.
I recommend all of Bryan Garner's books, but this is the one to start with--it's the most general, and the most broadly useful. (If you write briefs, as I do, the second one to get is The Winning Brief). Every once in a while I would quibble with one of the rules Garner espouses, but for every such rule this book must have ten others that have taught me that, much to my chagrin, I (and almost every other lawyer I know) have been doing something wrong, without realizing it, for many years. I wish I'd discovered Garner much earlier; he's really helped me improve my writing and the way my documents look. Law offices ought to make The Redbook standard issue. That's not going to happen, sad to say, but I can't think of a better, more useful book to give to new lawyers about to start their first legal jobs. Or to senior lawyers who recognize that they don't know everything there is to know about legal writing.
One downside to this book is that, because it is so comprehensive, it sometimes will seem a little too basic. If you're really a good legal writer you may want to start with one of Garner's more "advanced" books. But you'd be amazed at how many legal writers seem not to have learned what is taught in high school English classes. And in any case, this book covers much important stuff that just isn't taught in law school, much less high school, and that most legal writers don't manage to pick up along the way.
Highly recommended.
When you have to be right, this is the book. April 30, 2002
Wayne Schiess (Austin, TX United States)
48 out of 57 found this review helpful
Do you edit your documents based on vaguely-recalled rules from junior high? Do you turn to a colleague when you have a question about grammar, punctuation, usage, or style? Do you rely on old forms to prepare professional documents? Stop it. The answers are here; the source is the Redbook. It's the ultimate guide to writing correctly. Every lawyer should get it and use it.
Should be on all attorneys' book shelves March 5, 2005
R. Alembik (DECATUR, GA United States)
28 out of 32 found this review helpful
As a grammarian and etymologist by avocation, my tastes are a bit weird. Maybe that's why I actually enjoyed reading this book casually. Each of Garner's books belongs on the bookshelf of any attorney who considers himself a professional. My pet peeve is the attorney who I know is writing to impress the reader with his writing skills as opposed to the attorney who is writing to persuade the reader as to a particular position. The former will not have Garner's books in his library.
An Excellent Resource for the Pro Se Litigant and Newbie Pra February 12, 2005
Keith Kimmel (OK USA)
17 out of 22 found this review helpful
The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style is an invaluable resource for the Pro Se litigant. Many Pro Se litigants are not as fortunate as I have been. I have working relationships with several well-respected attorneys who allow me to borrow their templates and make my own from theirs. The attorneys actively practice in the area and are known for writing documents that win cases.
Most litigants are forced to resort to grabbing another attorney's brief off the internet and format theirs in a similar manner. But this can be problematic. After all, how do you know that the attorney you grabbed the brief from is doing it correctly? You dont -- until you get into court and the judge and the opposing counsel both give you 'the look' which inaudibly says "What the heck is this piece of garbage and why is it in my courtroom?".
Its often not just about what you say, but rather how you lay it out on paper. Presentation is very often just as important as what you actually say. That's why style guides like The Redbook are so important.
A must have resource that is easy to use February 20, 2008
Great_Scot
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A must have for the legal writer. The Red Book picks up where the Blue Book leaves off. Very useful, practical, easy to find information. Keep this beside you when you need a quick answer. Well worth the purchase.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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