Politics

Nine mantras to persuasion.

Judge David Weinzweig | 1.12.2026 11:15 AM

We have an epidemic. The virus is known to travel on paper and transmit over the keyboard: it jumps from old lawyer to young lawyer, preys on the inexperienced and insecure lawyer, and thrives in the imprecise and indifferent lawyer. It spreads like wildfire in college towns and institutions of higher learning. And it mutates! Oh boy, does it mutate. Turning verbs into nouns. Adverbs flourish. Adjectives and jargon run free.

That epidemic is bad writing—especially legal and persuasive writing. Legal prose is often dull and opaque, redundant and bumpy, labored and disorganized. It sputters and coughs in the opening sentences, leaving an unnavigable and incomprehensible mess for the reader to withstand. It's hard to read, harder to understand and hardest to remember. It prefers abstractions—abstract words and abstract grammar; abstract facts and abstract arguments. And it weighs on the reader's brain.

Why is so much legal and persuasive prose so bad? I think it's because many legal writers never stop to think about their readers. The elixir for this oversight is mindfulness. A persuasive writer anticipates, meets and remembers the preferences and expectations of his readers. He cares about communication and seizes control of his literary fate—guiding the writing process from start to finish. He knows why he writes, what he writes and how he writes. He knows that persuasive prose is not a monologue, but a dialogue between writer and reader. This book introduces the path to persuasion in nine mantras.

Be aware of the audience. A persuasive writer understands the singular importance of the audience and appreciates the inherent........

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