It's Not Just Me

But actual lawyers write badly too. This comes from a footnote in a judicial opinion quoted here:

To the extent BAM has successfully persuaded me of the fundamental soundness of its position, that success should not be attributed, in any degree, to its counsel's unrestrained and unnecessary use of the bold, underline, and "all caps" functions of word processing or his repeated use of exclamation marks to emphasize points in his briefs.... While I appreciate a zealous advocate as much as anyone, such techniques, which really amount to a written form of shouting, are simply inappropriate in an appellate brief. It is counterproductive for counsel to litter his brief with burdensome material such as "WRONG! WRONG ANALYSIS! WRONG RESULT! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!"

So there's your legal writing tip of the week. Don't write, "WRONG! WRONG ANALYSIS! WRONG RESULT! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!" as an argument.

I should probably edit out of my appellate brief, "Because I say so. And I'm RIGHT! RIGHT! RIGHT! ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!"