by Beth McCormack, Esq.
Quick Proofreading Tips for Busy Attorneys
Introduction
Proofreading mistakes are among the
most embarrassing mistakes a lawyer can
make, but they happen every day. Few
among us have not turned the word statute into statue or based a motion to suppress on a lack of “probably cause” in our
haste to meet a deadline. Or even worse,
we have scandalized a memo by inadvertently writing about a “pubic hearing” instead of a public one. These mistakes are
embarrassing, without a doubt, but costly
too. Not only can they damage our credibility as attorneys and hurt our reputation
with our clients, judges, and colleagues,
but sometimes these mistakes can have financial consequences. Consider the case
of a Minnesota attorney who was sanctioned and ordered to attend ten hours
of legal writing classes because the documents he submitted to the court were “rendered unintelligible by numerous spelling,
grammatical, and typographical errors”
and these mistakes were “sufficiently serious that they amounted to incompetent
representation.”1 In the court’s view, “[p]
ublic confidence in the legal system is shaken … when a lawyer’s correspondence and
legal documents are so filled with spelling,
grammatical, and typographical errors that
they are virtually incomprehensible.”2
Transactional lawyers are also vulnerable to proofreading mistakes, with higher
stakes where precise wording or punctuation is critical; mistakes may lead to malpractice. Just ask the lawyer who drafted
the postnuptial agreement between Frank
McCourt, the former owner of the Dodgers, and Jamie McCourt, his former wife.
Their postnuptial agreement stated Frank
was the sole owner of certain property “including” the Dodgers franchise.3 At least
some of the original copies did. After their
divorce, Mrs. McCourt discovered that
three originals of the documents substituted the word “including” with “excluding.”
Of the six originals, three had Mr. McCourt
owning the franchise solely and the other
three had Mr. McCourt owning the franchise equally with Mrs. McCourt. The attorney who drafted the postnuptial agreement insisted that “excluding” was just a
typo and those documents should have
read “including.” Typo or not, the court
ruled that the document was ambiguous.4
And the rest is history: Mrs. McCourt had
a claim for joint ownership of the Dodgers
franchise, Mr. McCourt was forced to settle
with her, the McCourt divorce became one
of the costliest divorces in California histo30
ry, and the drafting attorney was exposed
to a malpractice claim.5
Examples of proofreading and typo disasters abound, and many of you may have
your own horror stories, which prompts the
question, why is proofreading so hard? Why
can we look at a document today that we
wrote two weeks ago and spot typos immediately when they were invisible during
several rounds of proofreading then? Lack
of time is part of the problem, but the biggest culprit is our short-term memory. Our
short-term memory forces us to see what
we intended to write on the page rather than what we did.6 So to increase our
chances of catching typos and other mistakes, we must break the short-term memory’s hold. This article offers several quick
suggestions on how to do so.
Time
The gold standard for proofreading is
to give yourself time between completing
your draft and your first proofread. Days are
ideal. The passage of time will result in a
break in your mind between what you think
you wrote and what you actually wrote,
thereby allowing you to see what’s actually on the page. This solution is probably
as obvious as it is unrealistic to most busy
lawyers. Most of us simply do not have the
luxury to wait days before proofreading a
document that was due to a court, a client,
or a boss yesterday! In that case, even a
short physical separation between you and
the document can help. Try to finish a document at night and proofread it first thing
in the morning. Or at the very least, take
a break after you complete the document
before you begin proofreading. There are
a few other quick tricks you can try to increase the chances of catching typos and
other mistakes, some tips that you use on a
computer and some with hard copy.
Computer Tips and Tricks
Computer Tip 1—Control-Find: The Legal
Writer’s Best Friend
The “control-find” function on your computer’s word processing program is an ally
in your fight against typos. Just hit “Control” and then the “F” key, and a text box
appears on the screen. 7 I maintain a list of
troublesome words and punctuation that
I run through that text box in my finished
document. Here are some of the things on
my list:
1. The Three Great Grammar Gaffes
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • WINTER 2014
When training attorneys in legal writing,
author Bryan Garner refers to three common grammatical mistakes as the “three
great grammar gaffes.” They are:
• Their/There
• Your/You’re/You
• Its/It’s
Most of us know the correct usage of these
words. But whether by lack of time, spell
check, or some other slip of the hand,
the wrong use can creep into our writing,
and few mistakes are more embarrassing.
Therefore, when I’m done with my document, I’ll spend some time “contro Y