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Additional Audience Questions Answered by Tiffany:
- Are there any resources you use to source sample briefs, motions, etc.? → When I first started out as a lawyer, I often asked colleagues and supervisors for sample briefs and motions — both to get a sense of how the brief or motion should look and sound generally, and to see how a specific issue had been addressed in the past. Now that I’ve been practicing law for nearly 14 years, though, I’ve built up a pretty good database of my own briefs and motions to use as samples. Occasionally, I’ll still look for samples in practice guides, though.
- How many rounds of editing is adequate before you tell yourself to just leave something alone? → That’s a tough one. I often joke that if it weren’t for actual filing deadlines, I could tinker with a brief forever. But more seriously, I think the answer to your question depends on 1) how much time you have available for editing (if you’re pressed for time, even just one solid round of editing can certainly be enough), and 2) whether the changes you’re making during a given round of editing are significant and/or substantive, or merely minor technical edits. For example, if you’re editing a memo and decide to swap out a mini-brief of one case for a mini-brief of another, it’s probably a good idea to conduct another round of editing because such a big change creates the potential need for further revisions (e.g., to switch passive voice to active voice, to avoid nominalizations, etc.). On the other hand, if you do one round of editing and are generally pleased with what you’ve written and only make a few minor technical edits, chances are you’re close to a final product and don’t need another full round of editing. I’ll also add that ultimately, the number of rounds of editing you do will decrease over time as you become more comfortable with and confident in your legal writing.
- How do you balance wanting short, compact sentences and avoiding “it is”/”there are”/etc. phrasing? → In many instances, avoiding “it is” and “there are” will actually shorten the sentence. But on the rare occasion where it doesn’t, I would say that avoiding abstractions (which cause your reader to expend mental energy to understand) is more valuable than keeping the sentence as short as possible. There’s nothing wrong with a slightly longer sentence, as long as it is written clearly and in plain English. Long sentences become problematic primarily when they try to convey two or more ideas for your reader to process simultaneously.
- When did we start veering away from legalese, in other words, when did we start teaching lawyers to speak and write normally? → I don’t know when this transition started, but I know that I was taught to write in plain English when I was a first year law student back in the fall of 2008.
Panelist
Tiffany Gates
(she/her)
Tiffany J. Gates graduated from UC College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly, UC Hastings) and is a specialist in appellate law certified by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization.
In her solo practice, she drafts and responds to discovery motions, dispositive motions, post-trial motions, appellate briefs, and writ petitions exclusively on behalf of plaintiffs in various types of civil cases—including but not limited to personal injury, medical malpractice, wrongful death, product liability, and consumer class actions. She also represents indigent criminal defendants in their appeals from felony convictions as a panel attorney for the First District Appellate Project. And from September 2016 to May 2023, she served as a supervising attorney for the Hastings Appellate Project, where she guided third-year law students in their representation of undocumented immigrants before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in proceedings to challenge final orders of removal.
Tiffany’s work in the appellate courts has resulted in numerous published opinions, including favorable decisions from the First District Court of Appeal in Filosa v. Alagappan (2020) 59 Cal.App.5th 772, People v. Johnson (2022) 79 Cal.App.5th 1093, and Pacific Fertility Cases (2022) 85 Cal.App.5th 887, and from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Diaz-Reynoso v. Barr (9th Cir. 2020) 968 F.3d 1070.
