This past weekend our legal writing faculty attended the 7th Biennial Central States Legal Writing Conference in Chicago. The theme of this year’s conference was “Practice-Ready”: Preparing Students and Assessing Progress. In keeping with this practice-oriented theme, our legal writing faculty presented on three topics: using live critique feedback on student drafts, crafting persuasive word choice through attention to text, subtext, and context, and developing an argument for a new rule of law in an appellate brief.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm are familiar reading for many of us. A few years ago a student suggested I also read his essays, and in particular, “Politics and the English Language.” George Orwell, A Collection of Essays 156-71 (10th ed. 1981).

In this essay, Orwell claims that the English language is in decline, and that the decline has “political and economic causes.” (156) Orwell asserts, however, that the “bad habits” in written English can be avoided. (157) He reasons that in getting rid of these habits, “one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.” (157)