writing

Elegant Legal Writing book now available for preorder

Ryan McCarl’s book Elegant Legal Writing is now available for preorder and will be released in February 2024. I’ve pasted the jacket copy and blurbs below. I’ll continue to post excerpts and other useful content on the Elegant Legal Writing blog and on LinkedIn. By sharing posts you find helpful, you can help me spread the word about a book that can do a lot of good in the legal profession.

Elegant Legal Writing

A book and blog about how attorneys can write compelling prose.

Introducing Elegant Legal Writing

📚 Ryan McCarl's book Elegant Legal Writing is now available on Amazon! Buy a copy at bit.ly/elw-book and follow his blog at elegantlegalwriting.com. Ryan also maintains a free blog and email newsletter with legal writing tips, and regularly posts about legal writing and strategy on LinkedIn. Thank you for your time and readership. —— Ryan McCarl (LinkedIn | Twitter/X | Blog) is an attorney and law professor in Los Angeles.

Second Stage

Ryan McCarl's personal blog with short essays, memoir fragments, and notes from his readings and travels.

Introducing Second Stage, a newsletter and blog

It has been many years since I kept a personal blog, but I’ve decided to start again with a blog and email newsletter called “Second Stage.” You can read the first post and subscribe for free here. 📚 Ryan McCarl's book Elegant Legal Writing is now available on Amazon! Buy a copy at bit.ly/elw-book and follow his blog at elegantlegalwriting.com. I’m not yet certain which direction Second Stage will go, but I hope you’ll subscribe and follow along.

Productivity gurus and impossible goals

We live in the age of the “productivity guru.” A productivity guru is someone who advertises his or her own productivity and suggests that others can achieve similar results. I enjoy the books and other content produced by some people who can be characterized as productivity gurus—Cal Newport, David Allen, Tim Ferriss, and Marie Kondo, for example. But they have thousands of imitators, and for many of these, the core of their brand is exaggeration: exaggeration of what they have accomplished and of what you, the consumer, can accomplish by following their lead.

Claim preclusion across jurisdictions: navigating the labyrinth

The Daily Journal, a newspaper for California attorneys, just published my article Claim preclusion across jurisdictions: navigating the labyrinth. 📚 Ryan McCarl's book Elegant Legal Writing is now available on Amazon! Buy a copy at bit.ly/elw-book and follow his blog at elegantlegalwriting.com. I approached this article in part as a teaching and writing exercise, and as a chance to articulate some of the problem-solving methods I apply to legal questions. I did my best to simplify a complicated subject while keeping the article readable.
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