After 30 years of teaching, writing, and editing, Professor Joseph Kimble has distilled his experience and expertise into a seminar for legal and business writers.
The seminar is brisk, lively, practical, interactive—-and effective. No matter how good the writing in your firm or agency may be, this seminar will help you improve it.
The best endorsement comes from participants. On a scale of 1 to 5, they have rated the seminar at 4.6. Some typical comments from a recent seminar:
- Excellent materials; outstanding, practical tips.
- Speaker was lively, class was interactive, materials were well done; excellent examples to work on.
- Great workbook; good pace.
- Kimble was very thorough and knowledgeable.
Participants receive a 120-page workbook that is full of guidelines, examples, and exercises. The workbook is organized into 15 parts, such as these: Combatting Wordiness, Shortening Sentences, Sharpening Sentences in Other Ways, Connecting the Parts, Focusing on Briefs, Avoiding Quirks, and Punctuating Effectively. The longest part covers drafting (rules, contracts, and the like) for transactional lawyers. And all the parts are broken down into multiple subparts.
The seminar can last half a day or a full day (3, 4, 5, or 6 hours). CLE credit is pending in many states and should be available.
A Typical Four-Hour Program
20 minutes: Simplifying Inflated Diction (covering three principles)
25 minutes: Combatting Wordiness (five principles)
40 minutes: Shortening and Strengthening Sentences (six principles)
[15 minutes: Break]
30 minutes: Shortening and Strengthening Sentences, continued (four more principles)
35 minutes: Connecting the Parts (five principles)
30 minutes: Focusing on Briefs (seven principles)
[15 minutes: Break]
10 minutes: Formatting Documents (ten principles)
20 minutes: Avoiding Quirks (nine principles)
30 minutes: Punctuating Effectively (ten principles)
- Time and coverage are both flexible.
- An additional hour or two can be devoted to transactional drafting.