Recipe Of Making Effective Legal Briefs Communication is the biggest tool of a lawyer. Effective communication definitely gives advantageous position to lawyers before Court. There are different ways of communication i.e. verbal and non-verbal. Writing good legal briefs is one of the powerful ways to effectively communicate client’s grievance. Court many times admit matters on the basis of legal brief submitted before it. Thus, a good legal brief is high-priority for good remedy. Frankly, there is misconception that including too many legal jargons and complex words will help their case. This is a big no-no. Here, is the list of effective ways of writing good legal briefs: – Understand Facts and Remedy First and foremost, understand the facts and ask questions from client, clear all your doubts. You must examine all the documents provided by clients. Make note and cross-check with the client, if required. You may then research on the issues involved and list down the arguments for a favourable remedy. Remember, correlating arguments and remedy is significant task. Let’s understand it with an example. Generally, Income Tax Tribunals remands a matter, if it believes that lower authorities have not examined a particular evidence. So, if one argues on natural justice principle and seeks dismissal, then the chances are more of remand and not of dismissal. So correlating is pertinent. Focus on Language While drafting, what you write must be clear and succinct. The language should be comprehensible. Comprehensibility comes when the sentences are short and simple. Recently, a High Court Judge threw file during admission stage, as the brief’s language instead of being simple and straightforward had too many complex words making the draft unnecessarily complex. Always remember that complex words and sentences will be disadvantageous for your case; as the courts are already loaded with work. So, make your brief simple.
Strategize Your Submission What you want to convey and how you want to convey matters. Ultimately, you want the judge to focus on certain arguments. Remember that you are telling a story before Court. Your writing must be powerful enough to convince the judge. So, in few cases adding backgrounds, writing arguments in particular sequence or explaining a particular case law (which closely relates to your case) will help. I remember making a submission on share valuation at premium, to make my arguments look stronger, I added 2 or 3 paras only explaining valuation before delving upon main argument. This helped me in justifying share valuation. So, always remember to structure your submission effectively. Proofread the Document Proofreading is a crucial step in writing legal briefs as it saves you from blatant errors. It must be done for grammatical errors, sentences used, or words adopted for conveying the message. While proofreading, you must ensure that your brief has proper structure and nothing seems out of the place. Your arguments must deliver the message, you and your client want to convey. Also, you can get your legal briefs reviewed by your senior. This will help in getting good insights. Maintain Review File Finally, growth depends upon how well you understand and try to mitigate your errors. After continuous proofreads, you will understand common errors that you make in your legal briefs. Improvising on those matters as repetition of common errors takes you nowhere.
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