A well-written piece of advocacy should be easy to read; the thoughts and ideas presented should flow seamlessly from one to the next.

To achieve fluency, include in the first—usually topic—sentence of each paragraph (starting with the second in each section) what legal writing expert Bryan Garner calls a “bridging word or phrase”—that is, a transition that directly and explicitly links to what has been said in the preceding paragraph.

When you link your paragraphs, you take the reader by the hand and keep him oriented.  Since losing him is a very good way to lose your argument, including a transitional word or phrase (or “signpost”) in the first sentence of a paragraph is as important as making sure that the first sentence announces the topic or subject of the paragraph—if not more so.  As the literary critic and Romantic Period poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said, “A close reasoner and a good writer in general may be known by his pertinent use of connectives.”

Garner has identified three options for building a bridge between a new paragraph and the one before it:

• use a common, explicit, transitional or connective word or phrase, such as but, and, besides, even so, further, moreover, nevertheless, still, therefore, thus, although, and yet;
• use a pointing word, like this, that, these, or those;
• use an “echo link”—words that “repeat an idea in summary language” or “refer notionally to what has preceded.”

Here’s an example where the bridge (identified in bold) is an explicit connector, from Garner’s The Elements of Legal Style (2d ed.):

Shortly after his death, an article in the Atlantic
Monthly said that Taney was disposed ‘to serve the cause of
evil.’ [Examples of Taney’s infamy complete the paragraph.]

But it is now clear that the judgment of his detractors
will not prevail…. [Discussion of recent scholarship completes
the paragraph.]

Here’s more or less the same passage, but this time the transition is made using a pointing word and an echo link:

Shortly after his death, an article in the Atlantic Monthly
said that Taney was disposed ‘to serve the cause of evil.’ … 

This unflattering picture of Taney persisted for many years.
Now it is clear that the judgment of his detractors will not prevail….

“This” is a pointing word, and “unflattering picture of Taney” is an echo link, or notional reference, to “article in the Atlantic Monthly [saying that] Taney was disposed ‘to serve the cause of evil.’”

Sophisticated writers use all three options for building bridges:

Shortly after his death, an article in the Atlantic
Monthly said that Taney was disposed ‘to serve the cause of
evil.’ …

 Though this unflattering picture of Taney persisted for
many years, it is now clear that the judgment of his detractors
will not prevail….

“Though” is an explicit connector.

Garner tells writers to read over their work and make sure that the last and first sentences of successive paragraphs are smoothly joined.  If they aren’t, part of the argument has probably been left out.

Building bridges between paragraphs forces writers to “figure out how [their] sentences and thoughts relate to one another,” legal writing consultant Ross Guberman notes in Point Made (2d ed.).  Says Guberman, “By filling in those missing links, you’ll make your writing flow.”

About the author:

Attorney Savannah Blackwell is a former news reporter who covered government and politics for more than a decade, mostly in San Francisco. She can be reached at savannah.blackwell@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SavannahBinSF