Is Passive Voice Making a Comeback?
For the past decade or so, appellate lawyers have been taught to avoid the passive voice in their writing (the preceding sentence notwithstanding). But Dr. George Gopen of Duke University says that advice, as well as other principles emphasized in today's writing courses and CLEs, is wrong.
UT's Wayne Scheiss, author of Legalwriting.net, has taken Dr. Gopen to task for some of his ideas, including his challenges to the notions that shorter is better and that one should always begin a paragraph with topic sentence stating the issue and point of the paragraph. Read Dr. Gopen's response here.
This is an interesting debate. I can accept that passive voice has its place if used sparingly, but I must admit that some of Dr. Gopen's ideas challenge the way I think about legal writing. Ultimately, I agree with Ray Ward over at the (new) legal writer, who summed up his feelings this way:
I have found Strunk & White, Plain English for Lawyers by Richard Wydick, and the things Wayne teaches helpful. I've also found helpful books by Bryan Garner, Ed Good, Mark Painter, John Trimble, William Zinsser, Patricia O'Conner, and Roy Peter Clark. I've read, and recommended, George Gopen's books. Read them all. Learn what you can from all of them. But don't think that any one of them will give you The Whole Truth. Whatever you think you know, there's always more to learn.
