Guest Post by Joshua Rozenberg KC (hon)

It is an honour to welcome Mr. Joshua Rozenberg KC (hon), Britain’s most experienced full-time legal commentator, to my blog.  

Mr Rozenberg is the only journalist to have been appointed King’s Counsel honoris causa. He is, inter alia, an honorary Master of the Bench (bencher) of Gray’s Inn.  He was a non-executive board member of the Law Commission from 2019 to 2024. He was also the BBC’s legal correspondent for 15 years before moving in 2000 to the Daily Telegraph. 

No one is better placed than Mr Rosenberg to dispense advice on legal writing. Enjoy!

Guest post by Mr Joshua Rozenberg KC (hon)

I had no trouble in obtaining what my tutor described as a “reasonably safe” second-class law degree in the days before Oxford started awarding most graduates either a “2:1” or a “2:2”. But I struggled my professional exams until a struck-off solicitor who ran a crammer from an out-of-season hotel in Llandudno correctly predicted our exam questions and told us which five points the examiners would be looking for in each answer.

Then I trained as a broadcast journalist. Instead of putting the conclusion at the end – as you would with an essay, an opinion or a judgment – we were told to put it in the opening paragraph. That might be all that survived of our story. We were also taught to write clear, simple English. It was particularly important in broadcasting when viewers and listeners couldn’t rewind and listen again.

I still try to follow natural speech patterns in my writing. Don’t begin consecutive sentences with the same word; avoid repetition; and try not to scatter commas around unnecessarily. Please don’t think you need to begin words such as court, judge or even parliament with capital letters. Revise carefully.

Above all, don’t show off. Imagine you are talking to someone across a table. Take the reader with you. Enjoy writing and your audience will enjoy reading.