Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Vermont Bar Journal, Spring 2017, Volume 43, No. 1 | Page 21

by Jared Carter, Esq.
WRITE ON
Targeting the Audience: Tips and Tools
to Make Your Written Advocacy More Effective
At the beginning of each semester I al-
ways ask my students to brainstorm what
they think effective writing and good advo-
cacy looks like from the reader’s perspec-
tive. As they shout out words to describe
effective writing from the reader’s perspec-
tive, I try to keep up by scribbling each ad-
jective furiously on the whiteboard. Invari-
ably, they suggest descriptive words like
clear, concise, or organized. Next, I ask
them to close their eyes and imagine they
are the lawyer they always wanted to be-
come. I switch whiteboards and ask them
to describe effective writing and good ad-
vocacy from the perspective of that lawyer
- the writer.
What quickly becomes clear to the stu-
dents after they’ve shouted a new list of
descriptive words at me is that the quali-
ties of effective writing and advocacy are
the same regardless of whether one sits
on the reader’s or writer’s side of the desk.
The obvious point of this quick exercise is
that since both reader and writer want the
same things in good writing, the effective
advocate learns to edit their work to satisfy
their own needs as the writer because do-
ing so makes their work more persuasive to
the reader. Ultimately, my goal is to start
the semester off by encouraging students
to write and edit their work with a laser fo-
cus on targeting their audience.
Targeting the audience is well known in
the fields of media, marketing, politics and
public relations. The idea is simple: in or-
der to maximize impact the speaker must
know the target audience and speak di-
rectly to what will effectively persuade
that audience. For example, we all proba-
bly recognize that each word in every Su-
per Bowl advertisement is vetted through
focus groups aimed at targeting a specif-
ic demographic before it ever shows up
on our television or smartphone. 1 Similar-
ly, most major political campaigns hire me-
dia teams that specialize in messaging and
targeting a specific voter-set on the theory
that doing so will help turnout more votes. 2
It works. While we certainly cannot go to
such extremes for every legal document
we draft, the concept of targeting the audi-
ence is just as relevant to good legal advo-
cacy as it is to Super Bowl advertisements.
If we know what makes the audience tick,
we can tailor our writing to maximize its im-
pact on the reader.
In legal advocacy, the target audience is
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often judges and other lawyers. When tar-
geting an audience, our first step is to un-
derstand that audience. In this context, we
know that judges and lawyers are busy and
that they read many legal documents every
day. With this basic knowledge about our
audience we can deduce that judges and
lawyers are likely to appreciate writing that
is clear, concise and organized. While these
factors are not specific to the substance of
the writing itself, they are structural char-
acteristics that will allow us to target the
needs of our audience and thereby make
our advocacy more effective.
Clear and Concise:
While there are many ways to make writ-
ing clearer and more concise, two of the
most effective approaches are (1) using
subject, verb, object (“SVO”) sentence
structure 3 ; and (2) putting actors in sen-
tences whenever possible. 4

1. SVO Sentence Structure
The first approach to clearer and more
concise writing and advocacy is SVO sen-
tence structure. Consider the following
sentence example:
“The issue of guilt or innocence of the
defendant was decided by the jury o f
twelve members of the community.”
As writers and readers we understand
what the above sentence means. Gram-
matically the sentence is sound. As such,
we’re likely to pass over this sentence in
our editing process without much thought.
However, because the sentence does not
follow SVO sentence structure it is not as
clear or concise as if we had employed SVO
structure as demonstrated below.
“The twelve member jury decided
whether the defendant is guilty or inno-
cent.”
By rearranging the sentence so that the
subject (jury) appears first followed by the
verb (decided) and the object (defendant),
we make the sentence clearer because we
now see who is doing what and to whom.
In addition, we’ve made the sentence more
concise by taking it from 20 words down to
12 words. From the perspective of our tar-
get audience, these edits make our writing
and advocacy more effective.
2. Actors in Each Sentence
A second approach to clearer and more
concise writing and advocacy is editing so
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • SPRING 2017
that we include actors in our sentences
whenever possible. 5 Consider the follow-
ing sentence example:
“The legislation passed on a 28-2 vote.”
Again, as this sentence is constructed
we understand what happened and there
are no obvious mistakes. Once more, this
means we’re likely to miss the opportuni-
ty this sentence provides to strengthen our
writing in the editing process. Namely, if
we put an actor in the sentence we can im-
prove on clarity and target our audience.
“The Vermont Senate passed the legisla-
tion on a 28-2 vote.”
While the revised sentence has a few
more words, we gain clarity by including
an actor (the Vermont Senate) in our sen-
tence. Without having to refer to previous
sentences or make inferences the reader
sees concretely who passed the legislation
because the second sentence includes that
actor.
Both the SVO sentence structure and us-
ing actors in our sentences tend to improve
the clarity and efficiency of our writing. In
that way, these approaches help us target
an audience of readers who have little time
to waste on unclear and inefficient advo-
cacy.
Organization:
In any form of advocacy, organization
plays a critical role in effectively targeting
an audience. In legal advocacy, one of the
most important organizing tools is the ef-
fective use of headings in our writing. As
legal advocates we’re likely all accustomed
to using headings in our written work. But,
why are headings important and what char-
acteristics makes them the most effective?
First of all, a heading provides the ba-
sic building blocks of an advocate’s writ-
ten work. Headings create the framework
through which the reader navigates com-
plicated legal issues and facts. If the frame-
work is off, the reader can quickly get
lost in a legal argument’s details. One ap-
proach I use to make sure that my head-
ings and framework are effective is to copy
and paste each heading in order on a sep-
arate document. If my basic argument is
clear from just my headings, I can be con-
fident that the framework and arguments
I’m making are generally well organized.
In addition to setting the framework, ef-
fective headings clearly advocate the cli-
ent’s position. In an appellate brief head-
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