What a Famous Husband’s Bio Can Teach Lawyers About Better Drafting
Lawyer bios are filled with information that is of little interest to clients, according to a law firm consultant who charted his thoughts.
At his blog the (non)billable hour, consultant Matthew Homann of LexThink created two barely-intersecting circles, one with the information the lawyers put in their biographies, and the other with information that clients care about. Common to both circles were only two kinds of information: the lawyer’s e-mail address and phone number.
Lawyer information of little interest to clients includes things such as “where I went to law school in 1973” and “the judge I clerked with,” Homann says. The type of information that clients want includes “Will you return my phone calls?” and “What do your clients think of you?”
Kelly’s Blog noted Homann’s Venn Diagram, and added another pet peeve: Lawyer bios without personality and vibrancy. The blog notes the law firm bio of the late Martin Ginsburg, a tax expert and the husband of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He practiced law at Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson and taught at Georgetown University Law Center, the Wall Street Journal reported in its obituary.
Here are some excerpt’s from Martin Ginsburg’s bio:
“Professor Ginsburg attended Cornell University, stood very low in his class and played on the golf team. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School which, in those years, did not field a golf team.
“Professor Ginsburg entered private practice in New York City in 1958. He withdrew from full-time practice when appointed the Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and moved to Georgetown University in 1980 when his wife obtained a good job in Washington. …
“In 1993, the National Women’s Political Caucus gave Professor Ginsburg its ‘Good Guy’ award; history reveals no prior instance of a tax lawyer held to be a ‘Good Guy,’ or even a ‘Decent Sort.’ …
“Professor Ginsburg’s spouse was a lawyer before she found better work. Their older child was a lawyer before she became a schoolteacher. The younger child, when he feels grumpy, threatens to become a lawyer.”
