Thursday, August 16, 2007

Quick mid-day thought

Arg! How does this happen? I think to myself, "I just posted something yesterday, right?" and then I check and I last posted five days ago. A lot of it has to do with being back at work during the day. By the time I get home, make supper for me and Grandpa, do the dishes, run a few errands, and talk to Zac on the phone, I forget to sit down for 10 minutes and type. Shame on me.

After a bit of a rocky start to the work week, I've settled into a groove and feel good about the job again. There was a bit of a learning curve to what we're doing and I was beginning to question my competency as an attorney, reader and writer. I seriously thought my brain was turning to mush. Nothing was making sense. I was reading through pages and pages of court rules and I couldn't make heads nor tails of them.

But I came into work yesterday and it was like someone had turned the light on. Maybe a decent night's sleep was all I needed to get everything to settle into place. Suddenly all those poorly worded rules that I'm pouring over made sense.

Seriously folks - if you ever want to compose something in the most convoluted, bass ackward way possible, hire some of these local Federal Rules drafters. They're pros at taking a comcept that is perfectly easy to describe and turning it into something unintelligible.

Let's look at an example, shall we?

Here's one:

Parties shall furnish to the Clerk forthwith, upon demand, all necessary copies of any pleading, judgment or order, or other matter of record in a cause, so as to permit the Clerk to comply with the provisions of any statute or rule.

It could instead read:

Give a copy of your papers to the Clerk, if the Clerk asks for one.

Another:

All filed motions shall have annexed thereto a proposed order.

Revision:

You must file a proposed order along with your motion.

I swear, they make this 100 times more difficult than it needs to be.






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