What is POFP?

Why do lawyers refer to long documents as briefs and
18-year olds as infants? Why do they use so much Latin when so few of their
clients are Ancient Romans? Is it a conspiracy?


Party of the First Part has the answers! Check out the Website for the
Legalese Hall of Shame; a glossary of legal words linked to Adam Freedman's
columns; tips on writing legal documents in plain English; and more!



Friday, September 21, 2007

And the Winners Are....


The winners of the first annual Golden Gobbledygook Award were announced last night at a special ceremony in Brooklyn, New York. Read the full story at the website.
The winners are:
  • First Place: an "Information" filed in Oklahoma State Court (featuring a 1,028 word sentence!), submitted by Paul Sherman of Virginia.

  • Second Place: a ghastly pre-nuptial agreement, submitted by a lawyer who wishes to remain anonymous.

  • Third Place: a court pleading from New Jersey Superior Court, submitted by Cynthia Covie Leese, a retired Judge who, once upon a time, actually had to wade through that pleading. She was not persuaded!

  • Dishonorable Mentions go to: Joel Wakefield; Ken Adams (of Adams Drafting); David Dickinson; and Mila Zain.

All of the Winning submissions, and the Dishonorable Mentions, are available at the Legalese Hall of Shame! Thanks to everyone who submitted entries to the contest!


6 comments:

Greg May said...

Am I missing something? I can't find links to the actual entries anywhere. Are the snippets offered at the Legalese Hall of Shame all we get?

Adam Freedman said...

Hi Greg. In some cases, unfortunately, all I have is the snippet. Many of the contestants did not want to publish entire documents, for fear of violating confidentiality. But for the publicly-filed documents, I'll try to get those uploaded to the site (I'm slow at that).

Greg May said...

Thanks, Adam. I wasn't trying to be a wiseass in asking about more complete documents. I really appreciate your efforts. It was just so disappointing to read about a 1,028-word sentence without being able to actually see it.

Thanks for a great blog.

Adam Freedman said...

Hey Greg (and everyone else), finally got the link working. If you go to the Hall of Shame, you can now follow the link to read the 1,028 word sentence in all its glory. Enjoyeth!

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