Would you like to improve your legal writing?  If so, be sure to read a little bit each week!

I tell my first-year students that just a little bit of easy reading every week can greatly improve their legal writing.  I recommend sources about legal writing that are easy reads, like Garner and Scalia's Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges and The Scribes Journal on Legal Writing.   And, I always recommend Richard Wydick's Plain English for Lawyers, noting that the ten minute exercises are well worth the weekly time.  

Beyond reading about legal writing, I also recommend reading just a little bit of non-case book reading each week--preferably something easy to read, enjoyable, and well written.  The magazines I tend to think of are the ABA Journal and Sports Illustrated.  While admittedly the quality isn't consistently high, the pieces are usually well written and interesting.

In Garner on Language and Writing, Bryan Garner shares some of the well written writings that he recommends reading.  So far, I've found the following recommendations.

In the essay, The Importance of Attentive Reading, Garner recommends The New Yorker and The Economist.   He quotes Judge Easterbrook as suggesting The Atlantic or Commentary. 

And in the essay Finding Good Models of Writing, Garner recommends several models of legal writing, including his samples in Legal Writing in Plain English and The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style.  He also recommends the briefs from the Solicitor General's website and the Supreme Court briefs of Walter Dellinger,  Clifton Elgarten,  Miguel Estrada, Theodore B. Olson, Evan M. Tager, and Charles Alan Wright.

Additionally, he recommends Green Bag and the Green Bag Almanac.

I'll post again with any additional recommendations I find later in the book.