Nouns can be used in ways that tire the reader. Here are some things to watch for.

Noun chains
Richard Wydick, author of the excellent Plain English for Lawyers (5th ed, 2005), observes that long chains of nouns used as adjectives don’t make for vigorous prose.

As Wydick puts it, ‘noun chains create noun chain reader strangulation problems’. (See GWWT 42 for the contrasting German approach, which is fine with noun-accumulation.)

Writers of headlines in a certain kind of newspaper love noun chains: ZIKA VIRUS HEALTH CRISIS WARNING – NAZI MYSTERY GOLD TRAIN DISCOVERY – DEATH CRASH POLICE OFFICER …

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in eight years as a law librarian, it’s that every lawyer loves O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms. And as the purpose of such an encyclopedia is to save you work in creating documents, it follows that you must like O’Brien’s Internet even more, as it provides the entire O’Brien’s collection of first draft legal forms as Word documents.

Do you use O’Brien’s Internet? If not, you probably should. Here are a few pointers in using our province-wide subscription.

First, to access O’Brien’s Internet, you need to get to the Members Section. …

Conflict of laws, also known as private international law, is a topic concerning the rules governing what happens when two or more legal systems clash in a private dispute. Pitel & Rafferty’s text on Conflict of Laws identifies three key questions: (1) whether a court has jurisdiction, (2) what law the court will apply, and (3) whether a judgment from another jurisdiction will be enforced. Unlike public international law, conflict of laws is not the same everywhere, but is particular to each jurisdiction.

As such, some people have asked about developing a Saskatchewan-specific resource for conflict of laws. While most …

Oh, Microsoft, Apple and your ilk! You think you’re being helpful when you release new tools and updates, but you generally wreak more havoc than you bring clarity and certainty.

Herewith some views on some various writing ‘solutions’ (to use the lingo of Silicon Valley).

Auto-correct
I am a terrible typist, so in some ways a feature that automatically corrects obvious typos is a blessing.

But also a curse. The auto-correct feature that you get with the standard Microsoft products was not devised by lawyers, nor is it set up to work in a Canadian setting. It can also defy …

Have you ever noticed how irritating it can be when someone points out our errors?

At home we might hear: “You forgot to sweep the floor again.”

At work you may be told: “You missed citing the leading authority on this issue.”

Ugh.

It’s never pleasant to be called out on our mistakes. And if the message triggers a stress response, the hormones released inhibit our ability to reflect and reason for a time.

One key to working effectively in teams, with an assistant, or delegating tasks is to learn to provide feedback in a way that supports the individual’s …

Today’s SLAW tip is short and sweet. If you’d like to see an overview of the current status of federal bills, the Parliament of Canada website has a handy table: http://www.parl.gc.ca/LegisInfo/LAAG.aspx.

— Susannah Tredwell…

The growing pains experienced at law firms don’t usually get self-diagnosed as such.

Instead, they tend to be described in terms of the series of symptoms that happen to be manifesting, often at the same time.

Some examples:

• Without a parallel increase in billings, the lawyers, the staff and the law clerks, all appear to be more frenzied than normal.
• Individuals that used to work well together are, not infrequently, encountering ‘broken telephone’.
• A, not insignificant, percentage of work is being done by the wrong level or position.
• Tasks that used to be streamlined are starting to fall through the

The proof is in the pudding
This kind of makes sense, perhaps if you grew up in a culture where it is common to put a coin or other prize in a festive dessert (like the English at Christmas or the French on the jour des Rois).

But that isn’t the origin of the phrase. In its full, correct form, it’s the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

In other words, you don’t know what the thing is going to taste like until you actually sample it. Also applied metaphorically to any situation or thing that …

I was not hired back after articling. After months of searching (soul and otherwise) I was ultimately offered two jobs at the same time. One was located in a trendy area in Toronto for the “young and eligible”. The other was in a small city outside of Toronto, as foreign to me as another country. I had no idea how to choose firms, other than that accepting the Toronto offer would let me stay in my hometown, as, after all, I was young and eligible, and pay me more (at least initially). So I sent a quick thank-you email to …

HeinOnline is a popular full-text journal database available in the Law Society Library’s Members’ Section. Your firm’s library may also have a subscription.

Did you know that HeinOnline has an excellent blog?  Here are some recent research tips from their blog:

• Five Things You Can Do in Less Than 15 Seconds in HeinOnline
• Primary Sources, Secondary Sources and Beyond
• Comprehensive Search Results in HeinOnline Just Got Better
• Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals: Did You Know…?
• HeinOnline: Where Books Rule

We encourage you to consider subscribing to HeinOnline’s blog!

[This tip by Alan Kilpatrick originally appeared on the Law Society …