Between You and I: Worst Grammar Mistakes of Harvard Lawyers

Harvard, I have something to tell you. An elite law school produces great lawyers. Not great cooks. Not great drivers. Not great parents.

Your Law School graduates? Their grammar has much to be desired.

Hard to believe. I mean, how could someone like me know more than someone from Harvard? Figure, if it’s even worth knowing, they would teach it at Harvard.

And yet, after 25 years of working at a white shoe Wall Street law firm, I have to say, there’s a pattern here.

I remember the first legal draft I proofed, written by a Harvard lawyer named Helene. The petite, high strung young woman from Long Island had a thick accent and a bad temper. Helene fired support staff at the drop of a hat. When all else failed, she wailed.

I remember telling her that the restaurant she wanted to order from was closed for the night. Helene hissed back at me: “If I woulda known that, I woulda ordered from somewhere else.”

Indeed.

Over the decades, dozens of others have followed in Helene’s footsteps out of Harvard Law, making the same stupid mistakes in their pleadings and their purchase agreements.

We won’t go into their use of commas. That alone would send them to after-school detention with my daughter’s 3rd grade English teacher. Evidently no one at Harvard ever stumbled on William Safire’s “Fumblerules of Grammar” #12: Avoid commas, that are not necessary.

Someone tell me please how they do so well on the SATs, these Harvard men and women? Is there only one question about commas on that test? Or do they skip the subject entirely?

My fellow Americans, if the LSAT were based on commas, most law schools would be empty; tuition would be free, because so few people would qualify.

Enough. Let’s get to the list. Anything here look familiar?

1. The wholly-owned subsidiary – Never hyphenate an adverb. Yes, you hyphenate adjectives. An adjective is not an adverb. Hyphenate first-rate. Hyphenate slow-moving. Do not hyphenate wholly owned.

2. Between he and I – Lawyers are not the only professionals guilty of this cringer. I hear it on the Evening News all the time now that a Harvard lawyer is President: “President Bush graciously invited Michelle and I to meet with him…” Just between us, this mistake drives me nuts. Never say “between he and I” or “between you and I” or “they invited my wife and I.” The phrase you want is “between him and me.” If a President invites you over to the White House, tell people: “He invited me.”

3. And or But with commas – OK, I said we’d skip commas, but I have to get this off my chest: If you must start a sentence with “And” or “But,” do not use a comma. These are conjunctions. You don’t put commas after conjunctions. If you start a sentence with a legitimate conjunctive adverb — “However,” “Furthermore,” “Nevertheless” — use a comma. “And” or “But” are not conjunctive adverbs.

4. The elusive apostrophe – A leopard never changes “it’s” spots. It’s born with them. See the difference? A leopard with spots may be unpredictable, but so long as those spots are in place, it is — or should I say, it’s — always going to be a leopard. Its spots don’t change. It’s a known fact. Apostrophes confer possession only when they’re attached to someone’s name. “it” is a pronoun.

5. If only I would have known – Hail Helene. Like chalk on a blackboard, this hurts to hear. It doesn’t help that there’s a blog for law students called “Wish I Would Have Known.” A clause that begins with “If” is going to have verbs in the past perfect tense. “Would have” is conditional perfect. Say instead: “If I had known.” Ahhhh.

One last comment.

Lest you start marking up the vernacular all over this page, I plead guilty to dreadfully poetic license bleeding all over these paragraphs. Just trying to get the points across in the least amount of time. I have great respect for The Queen’s English. We just don’t talk like that. Not even those of us who didn’t graduate from Harvard.

Reference:

• dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/safire.htm