Writing Matters
| Publication year | 2021 |
| Pages | 0066 |
When a Timeline is Worth A Thousand Words
The details always matter in legal writing. Consider not only what details to include, but how to present them in a meaningful manner. Timelines, particularly in the age of screen reading, can help your text more clearly make a point.
BY DAVID HRICIK AND KAREN J. SNEDDON
For legal writing, the details matter. Those details include formatting requirements and punctuation rules. But sometimes the issue is how to present details to the reader. Often lawyers must explain detailed facts and their significance to the issue being addressed. It can be difficult to do that without losing sight of the big picture.
This installment of "Writing Matters" addresses three methods to enhance your writing when faced with that challenge. One is the need for text to clearly tell a story, which is often met by telling the story chronologically, or largely so. The second is that often the details will obscure or overwhelm the key point to be made, and that can be avoided by reinforcing the presentation of the text through a timeline, not to replace the detailed chronology, but to augment it. And the third is to structure a timeline to make the key point clearly. The last two methods are especially important if the reader will likely read the document on a screen, perhaps without the ability to make marginal notes or diagrams.
A Real Case as Our Example
We will illustrate an effective, detailed story from a real case, but supplement it with a timeline. In Hawkins v. Masters Farms, Inc.,[1] the decedent, Mr. Creal, had been killed in December 2000 in an accident with a truck owned by a defendant, a citizen of Kansas. The wrongful death suit against the defendant was filed in federal court and alleged that Mr. Creal had been a citizen of Missouri. The defendant moved to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, asserting that because Mr. Creal had been "domiciled" in Kansas at the time of this death he had been a "citizen" of Kansas, there was a lack of diversity, and so lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
The district court had permitted discovery, and in the following passage summarized the facts. Notice the structure of the court's story. It begins noting Mr. Creal living in Missouri but meeting a Kansas woman, and then chronologically detailing his growing connections to Kansas. But then the court shifts to his...
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