when should a lawyer use passive voice

Here are some situations where passive voice is perfectly proper:

Exception	Example
Use passive voice if you want to disguis ...	The professor has been called brilliant.
Use passive voice if you want to deempha ...	Her dog was hit by the defendant.
Use passive voice to avoid mentioning an ...	He was elected to Congress.
Use passive voice when the actor’s ident ...	The vase was damaged in the war.

Mar 25 2022

Full Answer

Should you use passive voice in legal writing?

For whatever reason, passive voice has taken hold as a go-to “space filler,” and lawyers slip into it all the time. Don’t make your reader wait for the most important part of the sentence. Avoid passive voice 99.9 percent of the time in your legal writing. Your briefs and memos will be shorter, and your readers will be happier.

Do scientists use active or passive voice?

Note: Over the past several years, there has been a movement within many science disciplines away from passive voice. Scientists often now prefer active voice in most parts of their published reports, even occasionally using the subject “we” in the Materials and Methods section.

How do you find the passive voice of a sentence?

A shortcut to try and identify passive construction in your writing is to look for an extra “be” verb (is, are, was, were) and the word “by”. a. active voice: The police officer arrested the man. b. passive voice: The man was arrested by the police officer.

What is passive voice in a lab report?

Passive voice is often preferred in lab reports and scientific research papers, most notably in the Materials and Methods section: The sodium hydroxide was dissolved in water. This solution was then titrated with hydrochloric acid. In these sentences you can count on your reader to know that you are the one who did the dissolving and the titrating.

What situations should you use passive voice?

When do I use passive voice?The actor is unknown: ... The actor is irrelevant: ... You want to be vague about who is responsible: ... You are talking about a general truth: ... You want to emphasize the person or thing acted on. ... You are writing in a scientific genre that traditionally relies on passive voice.

Should lawyers use passive voice when addressing the judge?

Courts and attorneys generally prefer active sentences to passive sentences in legal writing. Nonetheless, there are certain situations in which passive sentences are useful. In active sentences, the subject is doing the action.

What is the passive voice in law?

In active voice, the subject of the clause or sentence does the acting. In passive voice, the subject does not perform the action of the verb. Instead, the subject is acted upon, or as legal writing expert Bryan Garner says, in passive voice, the writer “back[s] into the sentence.”

What are the three main reasons to use passive voice?

Here are the four big reasons you might want to use the passive voice — and how they can help you when you write nonfiction.Emphasizes the Action. ... Creates a Sense of Anonymity. ... Fosters Objectivity. ... Imbues Authority.

Can you prove this law change into passive voice?

Can this law be proved by you?

What a crime has he committed change into passive voice?

Answer: The crime has been committed by you.

Should you not tell the police about it change the voice?

Answer: Let the police be not informed.

What is the passive voice of inform the police?

Expert-verified answer Let the police be informed in Passive Voice, it will be, inform the police in Active Voice. Usually, Active describes a sentence where the subject performs the action which is also stated by the verb but in passive voice sentences, the subject is acted upon by the verb so these two are different.

What is the difference between active and passive voice?

The active voice asserts that the person or thing represented by the grammatical subject performs the action represented by the verb. The passive voice makes the subject the person or thing acted on or affected by the action represented by the verb.

When should you avoid passive voice?

Whenever you have the choice, you should use the active voice. In formal discourse, the passive voice is unacceptable if it is being used to avoid saying who did some thing.

What are the reasons for against using the passive voice?

Reasons for not using the passive voice The passive voice uses too many words, and at times can be difficult to understand. The active voice expresses in fewer words and is easy to understand. Writing tends to become clearer when unnecessary words are not used.

Why do writers use passive voice?

Writers may use passive voice as a persuasive technique to mindfully accomplish burying, obscuring, or softening certain information. A criminal defense attorney may admit that “the man was murdered” without implicating anyone by including a sentence subject.

What is the first sentence in the sentence "The car was driven by the woman"?

The car was driven by the woman. The first sentence above is in active voice and the one below it is in passive voice. Active voice means that the subject or actor begins the sequence, followed by the verb or action, followed by the object or the thing acted upon.

How does a family law attorney soften the blow of his client's actions?

A family law attorney may soften the blow of his client’s actions by putting the client at the end of a less severe sentence. For example, “The child was taken to Indiana by his father on April 3, 2018” instead of “Respondent took the child to Indiana on April 3, 2019.”.

Is "was" a good flag for passive voice?

“Was” is a good flag for passive voice — it doesn’t always indicate passive voice was used, but it’s a good starting place.

Is passive voice a space filler?

For whatever reason, passive voice has taken hold as a go-to “space filler,” and lawyers slip into it all the time. Don’t make your reader wait for the most important part of the sentence. Avoid passive voice 99.9 percent of the time in your legal writing.

Who is Ian Gallacher?

Professor and legal writing expert Ian Gallacher notes that, just like professional violinists, professional writers (which includes all lawyers) should spend some time each day honing their technical skills.

When to use passive voice in legal writing?

There are certain times when you will want or need to use passive voice. Specifically, in legal writing, you may use passive voice if you want to deflect attention from the subject/actor in a sentence.

What is passive voice?

Technically, passive voice is defined as a ‘grammatical construction’ . And, in passive voice, the noun, or noun phrase, that would be the ‘object’ in an active voice sentence (e.g. the boy threw the ball), becomes the ‘subject’ in a passive voice sentence (e.g. the ball was thrown by the boy). Now, I can hear what you are thinking.

Why is active voice better than passive voice?

And, believe it or not, active voice keeps the reader’s attention much better than does a passive voice sentence. It jumps out at the reader and keeps them interested. In contrast, passive voice sentences can become vague or more complicated because it may be unclear who/what is doing the action in the sentence .

How to tell if you are writing in active or passive voice?

An easier way to check to see if you are writing in active or passive voice is to ask yourself who/what is doing the ‘action’ in the sentence. In active voice, the subject of the sentence is doing the action, while the ‘object’ is affected by the action . So, in the example of ‘The boy threw the ball’—‘boy’ is the subject of the sentence, ...

What is the most important class in law school?

One of the most important classes which you will take is Legal Writing . In Legal Writing, students learn how to conduct legal research, and how to write both objectively (i.e., legal memoranda) and, as an advocate (e.g., a trial brief or an appellate brief). (We will discuss writing objectively and as an advocate another time.)

What does it mean when you use active voice?

An ‘active voice’ gets to the point! When you write using active voice, you also use fewer words. Thus, if you are trying to convey certain concepts, or to persuade the reader, he/she will remember the ideas/arguments that you are making much easier when you present them using active voice.

What do students learn about legal writing?

Students also learn that legal writing can be a ‘quirky’ subject to understand.

What is the difference between an active and passive sentence?

In an active sentence, the person or thing responsible for the action in the sentence comes first. In a passive sentence, the person or thing acted on comes first, and the actor is added at the end, introduced with the preposition “by.”.

How to spot passive sentences?

To spot passive sentences, look for a form of the verb to be in your sentence, with the actor either missing or introduced after the verb using the word “by”: Poland was invaded in 1939, thus initiating the Second World War. Genetic information is encoded by DNA.

What is passive voice in science?

Passive voice is often preferred in lab reports and scientific research papers, most notably in the Materials and Methods section: The sodium hydroxide was dissolved in water. This solution was then titrated with hydrochloric acid.

What is academic writing?

Academic writing often focuses on differences between the ideas of different researchers, or between your own ideas and those of the researchers you are discussing. Too many passive sentences can create confusion: Research has been done to discredit this theory.

Is "formulated" a passive verb?

The passive form of the verb is signaled by a form of “to be”: in the sentence above, “was formulated” is in passive voice while “formulated” is in active. In a passive sentence, we often omit the actor completely: The uncertainty principle was formulated in 1927.

Is passive voice acceptable?

In some sentences, passive voice can be perfectly acceptable. You might use it in the following cases: The actor is unknown: The cave paintings of Lascaux were made in the Upper Old Stone Age. [We don’t know who made them.]

Can you use "we" in a lab report?

Scientists often now prefer active voice in most parts of their published reports, even occasionally using the subject “we” in the Materials and Methods section. Check with your instructor or TA whether you can use the first person “I” or “we” in your lab reports to help avoid the passive.