is unhelpful to attack a decision by assaulting the reader with a fusillade consisting ‘It of every nit-picking point that the drafter’s imagination can conjure up and moreover duplicating the points by phrasing the same complaint slightly differently over and over again. A court requires a coherent focused articulation of the real issues, ie matters of substance that can support a plausible argument. Drowning the reader in detail with a multitude of petty points, artificially divided up into numerous separate paragraphs which inevitably overlap achieves two outcomes to obfuscate the true issues and — irritate the court. If such an approach serves to impress litigants, then litigants must be disabused by legal practitioners of their appetite for rambling, repetitive waffle. The watchwords in formulating all documents to be presented to a court ought to be brevity, lucidity and cogency.’
‘It is unhelpful to attack a decision by assaulting the reader with a fusillade consisting of every nit-picking point that the drafter’s imagination can conjure up and moreover duplicating the points by phrasing the same complaint slightly differently over and over again. A court requires a coherent focused articulation of the real issues, ie matters of substance that can support a plausible argument. Drowning the reader in detail with a multitude of petty points, artificially divided up into numerous separate paragraphs which inevitably overlap achieves two outcomes — to obfuscate the true issues and irritate the court. If such an approach serves to impress litigants, then litigants must be disabused by legal practitioners of their appetite for rambling, repetitive waffle. The watchwords in formulating all documents to be presented to a court ought to be brevity, lucidity and cogency.’
ILJ_October.docx