About
Wayne Schiess directs the legal-writing program at the University of Texas School of Law and teaches legal writing, legal drafting, and plain English. He is a frequent CLE and seminar speaker on those subjects and has written dozens of articles on practical legal-writing skills, plus five books. He graduated from Cornell Law School, practiced law for three years at the Texas firm of Baker Botts, and in 1992 joined the faculty at Texas.
- In 2012, he was chosen as the law school’s legal-writing teacher of the year.
- In 2011, the Texas Pattern Jury Charges Plain Language Project, for which he was the drafting consultant, was named a finalist for a ClearMark Award by the Center for Plain Language.
- In 2009, five of his short articles were featured in the Scribes Journal of Legal Writing “Best of” series.
- In 2007, his legal-writing blog was selected for the ABA Journal Blawg 100: “The best Websites by lawyers for lawyers.”
Wayne, I’m writing about your post “Superscript Ordinals.” I know that the Bluebook bars superscripting, but have never liked the rule. I figured it was a relic of the typewriter era, and that the rule was a concession to those who lacked the technology to superscript. Since the percentage of legal writers who can’t superscript is now very close to zero, I’d favor doing away with the rule (not that the Bluebook editors are going to ask me).
So: WHY don’t we use superscript ordinals in legal writing, other than that the Bluebook says not to?