Sign up for our free newsletter.
When your brain knows just the right word, you can be more concise. And sometimes you can slip in the verbal dagger without the victim understanding what you’ve done.
When you want to say the defendants in the medical malpractice case just don’t give a damn, you can label their procedures insouciant. Insouciant translates from French as “uncaring.” Insouciance encapsulates the essence of negligence.
The law is a learned profession, right? So you would never call your opponent a liar. But you might assert that their arguments are specious.
You (and the judge) have heard this (specious?) argument a hundred times. It’s trite. It’s boring. You could say, “Counsel’s banal assertion does not justify the position set forth in this case.” This word is correctly pronounced as many as three ways, though the preferred pronunciation rhymes with “canal.”
Do you have an elegant verbal dagger you especially like to thrust? Please leave a comment telling us your choicest lingual weapon.
Illustration ©iStockPhoto.com
Get Attorney at Work’s daily dispatch every day in your inbox, just sign up here.