In a recent case, O'Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy, the First Circuit Court of Appeals was called upon to interpret an aspect of Maine’s laws on overtime pay. At issue in the case was Exemption F, which provides that the overtime provision does not apply to ...
Editing from a Different Perspective
It’s been a few weeks since my last post. The reason is that I was hard at work auditing the Webby Books code to make all Webby Books fully accessible, including to users with limited fine motor skills and blind people using screen readers.
Banish Extraneous Latinisms
This is post 2 of 2 in the series “Etymology”
In the early days of the new American republic, Noah Webster argued strongly for a simplification of English spelling throughout the land. This would, he argued,
Legalese: With Chips or French Fries?
This is post 1 of 2 in the series “Etymology”
There are probably many lessons to be learned from the recent Presidential election, but one of them is surely the value of plain speaking. Yet American lawyers seem to love obfuscatory language,
NaNoWriMo: No SloMo
A friend is currently participating in NaNoWriMo, and has just emailed to tell me how she is getting on. I realized that lawyers can learn a lot from this competition.
For those unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo,
Give Footnote Formats the Boot
When I first attended secondary school, every pupil was given a book containing information about the school. The book had a blue cover. It was my first encounter with something that everyone called the Bluebook.
Some of this Bluebook was slightly useful,