In “What Great Writers Can Teach Lawyers and Judges: Wisdom from Plato to Mark Twain to Stephen King (Part I),” Douglas E. Abrams discusses what legal writers can take away from good writers. Part I examines master non-lawyer writers on precision and conciseness. According to Abrams, unlike non-lawyer writers, legal writers face a “hostile audience,” i.e., other lawyers, judges, and clerks who read to find weakness in arguments, factual statements, etc. For this reason, precision is critical to withstand such constant critical attack from the “hostile” reader. Precision comes from choosing your words very carefully, meticulous writing, and careful editing.  As for conciseness, no one said it better than Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss):

“[T]he writer who breeds/more words than he needs/is making a chore/for the reader who reads./That’s why my belief is/the briefer the brief is,/the greater the side/of the reader’s relief is.” 

Too bad Dr. Seuss never wrote a book on Legal Writing.