The Tools of Argument: How the Best Lawyers Think, Argue, and Win

by Joel P. Trachtman

Laws (and contracts) are prepared in advance to control later behavior. Legislation is the mechanism by which societies agree in advance about what to do to prevent or affect specified behavior.

We call it “analysis and synthesis.” Lawyers break legal questions down into components, or elements, of a crime or of a claim, and then analyze each component separately.

This style of analysis and synthesis is also the secret of good legal writing. In the first paragraph, or section, of your argument, break the crime or claim into elements: analyze the claim. In subsequent paragraphs or chapters, examine each element separately to determine whether it is factually satisfied. Once you are finished, it is easy to “synthesize” or look at all the elements and see whether they comprise the crime or claim in question. This is the concluding paragraph or chapter. Yes, it is dry and stylistically predictable, but its beauty is in the elegance of its function. Good legal writing, like other expository writing, should be parsimonious—including precisely what is necessary to reach the conclusion, and nothing more. All