POFP Teams Up With Grammar Girl!

This week, yours truly is guest hosting the Grammar Girl podcast.

For those who don't know Grammar Girl, she is one of the nation's top podcasters, with fun and informative broadcasts about English language and usage. This week, I'm discussing the topic of "Readability" -- specifically how the rules for creating clear legal documents can be applied to any document.

Grammar Girl's podcasts can be found on i'Tunes or at the Grammar Girl website.

The Law Rocks - Literally

The Wall Street Journal law blog reports that a second year law student at Boalt Hall is creating legal-themed rock music -- filling, as they say, a much-needed void.

He's got a ballad about promissory estoppel, a blues anthem called "12(b)(6)" . . . and then, there's Mens Rea:

Oh, mens rea,

It's a guilty mind

The girl gives me mens rea

And actus reus isn't far behind

The Great Canadian Comma Dispute

Ken Adams from Adams Drafting delivered the news: the great Canadian comma dispute is over.

What? You didn't know about it? Read Ken's OpEd piece here. Ken served as expert witness in a case before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. It was essentially a contract dispute between two telecom companies. The commission issued a preliminary opinion that hinged on the placement of a single comma -- and that's when they called in Ken.

If you want to read more about punctuation in the law (and who doesn't?), read my column Comma Cause.

Update on The Golden Gobbledygook Award

Thanks to the following blogs that have mentioned The Golden Gobbledygook Award:

• Overlawyered


• The (new) legal writer


• California Personal Injury Blog


• California Debt Blog

As a reminder - we're looking for bad legalese. Exquisitely bad. Kind of like the Bulwer-Lytton Prize for the worst opening line of prose ("It was a dark and stormy night. . . . ").

To enter the competition, send me the best example of bad legalese you can find -- you can either post an entry here at the blog, or email me at adamjfreedman@yahoo.com.

The winning entry and runners-up will be posted to the Hall Of Shame on the POFP website -- and the person who submits the winning entry will get a signed copy of my new book, as well as the new audio book from star podcaster Grammar Girl, Anonymous Lawyer by Jeremy Blachman, and Lifting the Fog of Legalese by Joseph Kimble.

Good luck!

Legal Language Podcasts!

Take the The Party of the First Part everywhere you go . . . with the latest podcasts!

I've recorded a series of eight podcasts with all-new material. A new podcast will be posted each week. The first episode: "Warranties and Guaranties" is available now.

• iTunes, click here.
• Pod-Planet, click here.
• Podfeed, click here.
• Podcast Alley, click here.
• Odeo, click here.

It even has theme music . . . . enjoy!

Word of the Week

Larceny

A Latinate term for theft, larceny can be traced to an English law of 1225 which sought to punish those who stole deer from the royal hunting parks. The crime was given the name latrocinium (from the Latin latro, or thief), later anglicized to latrociny and finally larceny. The next larceny statute came fifty years later and was also, bizarrely, limited to the theft of the king’s deer. Could it be that for fifty years the British Crown had nothing more pressing than to crack down on deer theft?

Safire's Recommended Reading

In Sunday's New York Times, the great William Safire recommends three books about "the use and abuse of words." Mirabile dictu, but The Party of the First Part is the first book on Safire's list!

Safire praises POFP as a "lighthearted but lucid explanation of legalese." He also recommends Send: the essential guide to email for office and home, by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe; and A Century of New Words, by John Ayto.