LeClercq is the 2009 Legal Writing, Research and Advocacy Program Lecturer

Can the passive voice, a misplaced comma or an ambiguous phrase sabotage a legal document and send its author back into court—this time to defend his or her own written product?

Legal writing scholar and language expert Terri LeClercq knows that bad grammar and clumsy writing are costly errors that can jeopardize a lawyer’s career. She will provide evidence of the hazards of poor drafting on Tuesday, September 22 at 5:00 p.m. when she presents a free lecture on “Writing Rules that Matter(ed)” at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, located at 1801 Euclid Avenue.

LeClercq was Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas School of Law. She is the author of numerous publications on writing well and intelligibly for many disciplines and in many genres and has worked with universities, law firms and government agencies across the United States, providing expert opinion and testimony on language issues. he is the 2006 recipient of the AALS Section on Legal Writing’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

In her Cleveland-Marshall Legal Writing Program Lecture, LeClercq will review specific documents and explain how they wound up being the focus of litigation, backtracking to the drafting phase where errors and ambiguities in language occurred.

For details, call 216.687.6886 or email louise.mooney@law.csuohio.edu.

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Cleveland-Marshall College of Law was the first law school in Ohio to admit women and one of the first to admit minorities. In 1946, the Cleveland Law School merged with the John Marshall School of Law, founded in 1916, to become the Cleveland-Marshall Law School. In 1969, the Law School joined Cleveland’s new public university as its sixth college and was renamed the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law of Cleveland State University. Early graduates of the College of Law laid the foundation for the legal profession in Northeast Ohio. Now in its 112th year, Cleveland-Marshall is preparing promising students to be America’s leaders in the 21st century in law, business, non-profit agencies and government.

For more information on Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, visit www.law.csuohio.edu.

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