![]() Several of WordRake’s suggestions here are simply wrong. In this next example, WordRake does not perform as admirably. It smooths out “a violation of” to “violating” and does the same for “the showing of” to “showing.” ![]() It deletes both “generally” and “in this regard” as unnecessary words. Here, WordRake has succeeded in improving Scalia’s prose. Here you see WordRake’s treatment of the opening paragraph of Scalia’s concurrence: When it is done, you can review its suggestions and accept or reject them. Highlight a selection of text, select “Rake” from the WordRake menu, and the program begins to scan the document. This takes just a few moments, after which WordRake appears on the Word menu. First, I downloaded the free, three-day trial of the software and installed it in Word. Taking my cue from Rosen, I pasted Scalia’s Lamb’s Chapel concurrence into a Word document and ran it through WordRake. Like some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District. Rosen calls Scalia the court’s “most dazzling writer.” To illustrate his point, he quotes a sentence from Scalia’s concurring opinion in the 1993 case, Lamb’s Chapel v. If WordRake could improve on Scalia and Kagan, imagine what it could do for the rest of us, I thought. As an example, he cited her dissent in the 2011 case, Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. ![]() Kagan received praise from Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic for her “emergence as an eloquent voice” on the court. Garner, Scalia is the author of two books about legal writing, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, and Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. What better way to test WordRake, I decided, than to use it on two of the most eloquent writers on the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Elena Kagan. It is the creation of Gary Kinder, a lawyer and writer whose 1998 book, Ship Of Gold In The Deep Blue Sea, went to number seven on The New York Times bestseller list. An add-on to Microsoft Word, it “rakes” your documents in search of unnecessary and obtuse words, suggesting edits to improve clarity and concision. WordRake is a new editing program created specifically for lawyers.
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