The Hindu Business Line : To write a good opinion, you need the right mental attitude

FINISHED product of an audit is an opinion, clean or qualified, adverse or disclaimer. There is a standard lingo for opinions that is spoon-fed to CAs, and one can churn opinions year after year from a boilerplate file stored in the computer, so much so, that some audit reports have sported even an older year in the date. But if you want to know more, here is Opinion Writing from the Inns of Court School of Law, London, and the Indian edition of the Oxford book is available from Asia Law House (www.asialawhouse.com).

The book is primarily designed "to support training on the bar vocational course," informs the foreword, but since there are reports of lawyers busily tugging at one another's robes, I thought we can learn from what's written for them.

The intro begins with written word skills for they are the `tools of the trade'. "To explain something to your client, you must put it in such a way as to be sure your client understands." Also, remember that "you must not just speak and write well — by the standards of everyday life you must write exceptionally well." Why so? Because "you will be offering your services and charging a fee for which you undertake to speak and write better than those paying you could have spoken or written."

The book lists many a quality of good writing, such as logical structure, clarity, grammar, precision and so on. Here is something of relevance to journalists too: "You should always have the reader in mind when you write." Similarly, on non-ambiguity, the tip is: "When you are writing in a legal context you must be aware of all the different viewpoints from which your words might be seen."

To improve your writing skills, pay attention to sentences. "A common error is to write an incomplete sentence." Keep your sentences as short as possible is another lesson. "The longer the sentence, the more the reader has to remember before being able to work out what message the sentence is conveying." Long sentences are indigestible and mere `nonsense'.

Plain English involves the use of `plain and straightforward language which conveys its meaning as clearly and simply as possible without unnecessary pretension or embellishment,' is a quote of Richard Wydick. "For most people correct grammar is instinctive, and mistakes only occur when we do not conceive a sentence as a whole." So, a clue: "Always read through whole sentences, trying to phrase them as you would if speaking them aloud, and any grammatical errors will probably leap out at you."

Do you know that to write a good opinion, you need the right mental attitude? Be a practitioner, as opposed to an academic, is the advice that the book offers. "Practitioners are not much concerned with what they know, but on what they do." You can say the opposite for academicians. "To the academic, the problem is more important than its answer."

You can write the following lines in big, bold letters because they are the `four fundamental principles' for practitioners: (a) You are dealing with a real situation; (b) The facts are more fundamental than the law; (c) The law is a means to an end; and (d) Answer the question.

On whether or not to read Opinion Writing, are you looking for second opinion?

BooksOfAccount@TheHindu.co.in

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