Wisdom's Idiosyncrasies: Tips on judicial opinion writing

The dominant template for legal writing is the judicial opinion.  John Minor Wisdom was a masterly legal writer, hero of the civil rights movement as a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judge,  and a bit of a curmudgeon of the old school (witness his opening line)

He gave his tips to his law clerks as “Wisdom's Idiosyncrasies”.  He offered it to the Yale Law Journal for publication shortly before his death in 1990.  109 Yale L.J. 1273

The memo can be found HERE