An agreement is rescinded and rendered of no force and effect.
Worlds like hereto, hereunder, thereby and therefore litter the writings of lawyers.
I like to think that I was a better writer until I became a lawyer. As a campus journalist, I learned to make my articles brief and direct to the point. As a lawyer, I adjusted to make my memoranda long and winding to stretch them to several pages
While an aspiring writer should write in simple language, a lawyer is expected to be technical. Instead of saying that the complaint is incomplete, a lawyer is to say it is legally impaired. Instead of saying that the complaint is defective, the lawyer says it is a mere scrap of paper.
It is encouraging to note that there are justices in the mould of Justice Zenaida Elepano. She advocates the use of action words to give life and motion to the pleadings.
Instead of saying, the victim was killed by the accused, you say -- the accused killed the victim.
Instead of saying, the motion was objected by the lawyer, you say -- the lawyer objected the motion.
Instead of saying, the copy of Sun.Star was bought by Mr. Frank de Jesus; you say -- Mr. Frank de Jesus bought a copy of Sun.Star.
So the banner headline of the Inquirer says -- High Court kills Cha-Cha; not Cha-Cha was killed by High Court.
A common mistake of a lawyer is the use of a dangling participle.
Believing the accused to be insane, the judge acquitted the accused. Who is insane? -- the judge or the accused?
Accusing the adverse lawyer to be stupid, Atty. dela Cruz shouted invectives. Who is stupid -- the adverse lawyer or Atty. dela Cruz?
Elepano emphasized to place modifying words close to what they modify.
Recent development discouraged the use of gender sensitive phrases. We should not refer to any sex as the "weaker sex". If women refuse to be known as the weaker sex, the more reason that men cannot be referred to as stronger sex.
Words like chairman and policewoman are no longer exclusive. There are chairwomen and policewomen around. It's a blessing that lawyers are not known as lawmen; otherwise many lady lawyers would rise to object to its use.
I believe that the Reader's Digest style of short and crisp sentences keeps the reader glued. When I was a struggling lawyer in the 1970s I started my memorandum with this opening sentence:
"The silence of the night was pierced by bursts of gunfire."
Many lawyers laughed and scoffed at my style so I shifted to the boring legal prose. How I wish that we inject adrenalin to the senile and sepulchral words of lawyering.
