Name your favorite book. What’s your favorite line from that book? Do you have one? Can you even remember one line, one quote from the book? Now, name your favorite movie. What’s your favorite line from that movie? Can you pick just one, or are there too many to choose from?
If you’re like me, you have a favorite book, one you love above all others, one that you tell people is a “must-read.” Yet as much as you love that book, you cannot recite one line from the book. You almost can. You can visualize the setting and the main characters in your mind. You can imagine how they sound and their attitudes. But try as you might, you cannot remember one line of dialogue from the book.
On the other hand, reciting your favorite line from your favorite movie is no problem. In fact, you may trot that line out with friends, family or co-workers. Indeed, you may repeat it so often that your co-workers, friends and families are fed up with it and with you. There’s just so many times people can hear you say: “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli,” before they want to treat you to the same end that awaited Paulie in The Godfather.
Why is this? Why do quotes from movies implant themselves so clearly in our brains while the written word does not? Is it that movies are better than books?
History and experience tell us that’s not so. Indeed, rare is the case in which a book is adapted into a movie and the movie version is a better story. Does it happen? Yes. But that’s the exception not the rule. So why do we remember quotes from movies far more easily than quotes in books?
One explanation may be provided by media richness theory, which was developed in the 1980s. Face-to-face communications or communication via video combined with audio are richer forms of media than the written word in that they are able to communicate complex ideas more quickly and more effectively in a shorter period of time.
Why is that? There are a number of reasons, but chief among them is that the spoken word, because of nonverbal cues, as well as tone and pitch of voice, taps into emotion far more effectively than words on a page. Thus, while human behavior is driven both by logic or reason on the one hand and emotion on the other, there has been suggestion that up to 90% to 95% of decision-making is driven by emotion. And the spoken word is more effective at tapping into emotion than the written word.
But whether behavior is driven primarily by emotion or whether it’s driven in equal measures by emotion and logic, it’s clear that emotion plays an integral part in our decision-making and behavior. Accordingly, communication meant to foster a decision (e.g., legal briefs) that can tap into both logic and emotion is presumably a superior form of communication than that which appeals to just logic.
If you don’t believe this, just try it for yourself. Read the French national anthem, La Marseillaise. Then listen to it being sung by Victor Laszlo and various expats in Casablanca. That will clear up any doubts.
That’s all well and good, but how does this relate at all to legal writing? After all, legal writing is just that—writing. It’s just words on a page, often filled with emotionless jargon and citation. What good does it do to know that the spoken word is more effective than the written word in communicating if you’re required to present your ideas and arguments via a written document?
Well, it means that you can test your written material by reading it aloud. Doing this will reveal whether your writing is clear and whether it flows naturally—like spoken language—or whether it is stilted, complex and overly structured, filled with dependent clauses, as legal writings (and, indeed, this sentence) all too often are.
Hint: If reading your work out loud leaves you breathless or you find yourself tiring of your own voice, that’s a sign that you should trim your work down to size.
Reading your work aloud will also enable you to identify typographical, grammatical and syntactical mistakes. Indeed, anyone who has been practicing law for some time knows the sinking feeling of filing a brief or sending an email only to later find a typo in the document despite having proofread that document multiple times. Reading the written work aloud, however, is an excellent double-check that will assist in spotting typos and other grammatical mistakes.
Perhaps most importantly, reading your work aloud will enable you to determine whether your work has any emotional impact. If it sounds like you’re reading a grocery list, there’s a good bet it will read just as bloodlessly to a judge.
Is reading your work out loud a cure-all for problems in your writing? Certainly not. But it definitely will help. As Yul Brynner said in The Ten Commandments: “So let it be written. So let it be done.”
Alex Barnett is a partner at DiCello Levitt, where he focuses on complex, class action litigation and representing those injured by antitrust violations.
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