As Needham writes, "When WordRake chewed through Scalia's Romer dissent, it desperately wanted Scalia to stop saying 'sort of.'" That's not bad advice, but not fitting to how Scalia used the phrase, which was to discuss the "sort of 'animus' at issue," not to say the Constitution "sort of" allowed anti-gay legislation. Was WordRake able to improve Scalia's writing? Maybe, but not in a way that left its content wholly intact.
(Bigotry? States' rights? The law as tool for moral disapprobation?) It Doesn't Hurt. Scalia's dissent was a long, impassioned screed, a long defense of. In case you forgot, Romer is a landmark gay rights case in which the Court ruled that animus towards a group alone is not rationally related to legitimate state interests and therefore such laws cannot withstand even the least demanding levels of scrutiny.
To test WordRake out, Needham tried it out on a series of documents, including the late Justice Scalia's dissent in Romer v. It was created by a lawyer and operates like Word's built-in review functions, but much more sophisticated. WordRake is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that proofreads your writing and suggests changes. Lawyerist's Lisa Needham recently reviewed one such robotic copy editor, WordRake, and the results were. In fact, there are even a few such programs devoted specifically to legal writing. When it comes to a little editorial help, you can rely on your handy copy of Garner's Elements of Legal Style, your built-in spelling and grammar checker, or any of the many automated proofreading programs out in the market. And there's a bevy of automated editing and proofreading software out there that promises to improve your writing with the click of a button. It should be better, though: clear, accessible, and sometimes even enjoyable to read. But we're not poets here, and legal writing doesn't have to be (and probably shouldn't be) best-seller worthy.
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