Law Firms Editing and Proofreading Services

Twenty lawyers wrote the proposal, and it reads like twenty lawyers wrote it. Section three is dense and impersonal, section four is warm and uses contractions, one biography says "Jane Doe has represented" and the next says "Bill acts for", the firm is "the Firm" on page two and "we" on page nine, and three different partners have described the same matter in three different ways. Every section is competent. The document is not, and the reader assembling a shortlist is reading it beside four others.

Requests for proposal and pitch documents make up most of the law firm work that reaches us. Directory and awards submissions arrive with them, along with capability statements, practice pages and lawyer biographies. Client alerts, newsletters, seminar and CLE materials, engagement letters, and firm style guides come through the same files.

House style is the real problem in this field, and it is rarely the problem anyone reports. What arrives is a document written by many hands over three weeks, and the complaint is that it "needs a polish". What it needs is one voice: a single decision about whether the firm is "we" or "the Firm", about whether lawyers are named in full or by first name after first mention, about serial commas, about how court names and citations are given, about capitalization of practice areas, and about whether the past or present tense is used to describe experience. None of those decisions is more correct than its alternative. Making the same one every time is what reads as a firm rather than as a collection of individuals.

Marketing copy for a law practice is also written under a professional rule, which distinguishes it from marketing generally. A lawyer "shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer's services", and a communication is false or misleading if it "contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make the statement considered as a whole not materially misleading."¹ Whether a given claim crosses that line is a question for the firm and its general counsel, not for an editor. What an editor can do is notice the constructions that most often carry an implication nobody checked: a result described without the qualification that made it possible, a superlative that would need substantiating, a comparison with unnamed competitors, and an omission that changes how the sentence reads as a whole. Those come back as queries.

Two claims recur often enough to be worth naming. Specialist and certification language is regulated, and a lawyer may not state or imply certification as a specialist in a field except in the circumstances the rule sets out.² Jurisdictional description is the other: a firm with lawyers admitted in three states, writing copy that reads as though the practice operates everywhere, is making a statement that touches on where its lawyers may practice.³ Neither is an editorial judgment. Both are places where a sentence written for rhythm can imply more than the firm intends, and a query costs nothing.

Client confidentiality is the constraint that catches pitch documents. Experience sections are built from matters, and matters have clients. The professional rule prohibits revealing "information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent" or one of the stated exceptions applies.⁴ Whether a particular matter may be described, and in what terms, is the firm's decision and is often governed by the engagement letter. What an editor sees is narrower: a matter described so specifically that the party is identifiable to anyone in the industry even though no name appears, the same matter described one way in a directory submission and another way in an RFP, and a deal value that appears in a pitch document and nowhere in the public record. Each of those comes back as a question rather than as an edit.

Directory and awards submissions are read comparatively, which changes what good writing means. The reader has a stack, a deadline, and a form. A submission that states the matter, the firm's role, the value or scale, and what made it difficult, in that order and in four sentences, is more useful than a page of narrative that reaches the same information by paragraph three. Cutting is most of the work, and it is easier to do for someone who did not write it and is not attached to the sentence about the client relationship.

We do not make the professional judgments. Whether a claim is accurate, whether a matter may be described, whether a result may be cited, and what the firm wishes to say about itself are decisions for the firm and its counsel, and they reach us made. We do not add a credential, sharpen a result, or resolve an inconsistency between two documents by choosing the more favorable version. Where two submissions describe the same matter differently, both come back with the difference set out.

Everything sent to us is confidential, including client names, unfiled submissions, and pitch material for work the firm has not won.