Cross examination
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One of the great pieces of advocacy about advocacy. Anyone who cares for the law should hoover this up.
1st – Be brief
2nd – Short questions, using plain words
Short Questions. Plain words. Again you’ve got to acquire the knack of asking short questions using plain words, because in law school, by and large, you have been practising long sentences using elaborate words. You know, lawyerese. I don’t know why it is that it is a custom among lawyers to speak and write this peculiar dialect of English that is known to nobody else except lawyers. English is an extraordinarily rich language. There are five synonyms for everything. Always one or two of those synonyms derive from the Germanic languages and they are short and punchy. The other words, which mean the same thing, derive from the Latin, and they are long and kind of complicated.
Develop the knack for always choosing the Germanic word.
For five-and-a-half years I’ve presided in that trial court in New York City. ... On the civil calendar the automobile accident was the bread and butter of it. God knows how many I presided over: hundreds, maybe even a thousand. Out of all of those cased and all of those lawyers, ladies and gentlemen, so help me, not once did I ever hear a lawyer use the word “car”. It was always “motor vehicle”. Not once did I ever hear a lawyer say to a witness, “how did you drive your car?” It was always, “what did you then do with respect to the operation and control of your motor vehicle?”
As if they were writing a trust indenture and in any event, that’s no way to write a trust indenture.