Call me a bitter feminist (because I am) or prude or practical. But frat boy lawyers are worse than Yalies. And just because I don’t grab my non-existent balls like you or utter ridiculous juvenalia like “owned” or “fail,” doesn’t mean I can’t tell you directly how ridiculous you are. Grow up. You are no longer “in the Bro Zone.” Stop abusing these four obvious and insipid frat boy lawyer words and you may actually move up in the law job pecking order.
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QMy Legal Research and Writing class is driving me insane. I understand why it is important to get citations exactly right. I do not understand why I have to use em dashes (which I’d never even heard of until last week) instead of parentheses or why my ellipses need to include extra spaces between the periods. I’m being told that my writing structure and legal analysis are generally quite good, but I’m being marked down for minute differences in word choice and other things that make no sense to me. Please tell me that there is actually a point to all of this. It has been suggested in class that if we don’t have near-perfect memos to use as writing samples, we’ll find it hard to get jobs this summer. What’s a 1L to do? Just how important is the em dash anyway?
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Today’s grammar lesson is brought to you by the word “etc.,” short for etcetera and generally signifying “ah, screw it and such.” But are lawyers using etcetera in their practices? You betcha. Sprint’s online terms and conditions have 40 etcetera’s sprinkled throughout the contract. Lawyers for Mail Boxes Etc. use the term liberally throughout most of that company’s legal papers. Should the common lawyer use it in important legal documents? Yes. Here’s how and when you should use this nifty little legal gem.
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