"Must lawyers write badly?"

Jonathan Glater asks, a propos of David Brooks's observation that Harriet Miers's written work, as president of the Texas Bar Association, was "vapid" and "pedestrian." Glater brushes aside the explanation that bar association work requires a certain blandness to avoid controversy:

Avoiding controversy does not explain, for example, this carefully convoluted sentence Ms. Miers wrote in a September 1992 column: "We have to understand and appreciate that achieving justice for all is in jeopardy before a call to arms to assist in obtaining support for the justice system will be effective."

When lawyers write professionally they adopt the style of what they read: judicial opinions, legal briefs and law review articles, which are not scintillating stuff. For those who have a creative flair when they begin law school, keeping that spark alive requires effort. "After graduating they go into a law office somewhere where lawyerspeak is encouraged," said Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School. "Once you get far enough down that road, it becomes hopeless."

There is a generic style that seems "professional," but good lawyers know there is a better level of writing that is much crisper and tighter, even if it too lacks personal style.

For personal style, lawyers blog. (I note that it was just a week ago that Glater was trying to figure out why lawyers blog.)