I’m a big fan of Ernest Hemingway. I love his writing style. I’m currently rereading all of his novels, and I ran across a quote that I think every lawyer and law professor should read and take to heart.

I don’t think Hemingway was a fan of lawyers. The only lengthy portrayal of a lawyer in his fiction is in To Have and Have Not, and that lawyer is a crooked, double-crossing sleaze. I’m reasonably sure he never wrote or said anything specifically about legal writing. But the following passage from The Garden of Eden captures the essence of good legal writing:

Be careful, he said to himself, it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

No legal writing instructor could have said it better than Papa.