Anissa Bluebaum Has Legal Writing Issues



Anissa Bluebaum law firm

 At the link you can look at Anissa Bluebaum's lovely website for the Anissa Bluebaum Blog and law firm in Ozark, Mo.  At this link you can look at Anissa Bluebaum's facebook page where she notes that she is inspired by Donald Trump among other notables.

Anissa doesn't list any literary (apart from the Donald, or) English major heroes, or teachers which may be reflected in her struggles with grammar and notably in her pleadings.  This is Kathryn Wolf's story for the Ozark News:

The same attorney who drew public criticism from a Greene County judge is now facing similar complaints from a local attorney.  Until Tuesday, Anissa Bluebaum represented Alison Peck, a former teacher who faces criminal charges for failing to register as a sex offender. Peck pleaded guilty in 2009 to five charges of statutory rape in three separate counties against a former student.

Bluebaum withdrew from the criminal cases Tuesday. According to online court documents, a public defender will be appointed to represent Peck in those cases.

Bluebaum remains the attorney in the civil case Peck filed in March against her former probation officer, Rebecca Martin.
Richard Crites, Martin's attorney, has responded to the complaint against Martin with an eight-page list of questions about both the accusations in the case and Bluebaum's abilities as an attorney.


"This petition is the worst example of pleading that the defendant's attorney has ever witnessed or read," Crites wrote in a recent motion.

Because of the fact that two people are named in the suit, Martin and her brother, Crites repeatedly asks who Bluebaum is referencing with the terms "defendant's" and "defendants."

"Defendant does not know whether plaintiff is just not familiar with the use of possessives or whether plaintiff was referring to merely one of the two defendants" the motion document said. "...is this merely the poor usage of the English language by plaintiff's attorney? We have no earthly idea which is the case."


Crites' motion asks that Bluebaum clarify the allegations in the civil petition, including where and when referenced incidents oc-curred. He said the case can't move forward until those questions are answered.

"Without answers to these questions and dividing this long-winded allegation into separate paragraphs, there is no way on God's earth that the defendant can reasonably be expected to answer this diatribe," he wrote.
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Ms. Bluebaum is a young attorney flying solo.  She needs help in drafting and legal writing or she'll have to respond to these mean-spirited motions and replies.  She should bear in mind that when she files a lawsuit there better be a good faith basis for the filing or these grammatical glitches will be her undoing in front of an unsympathetic court with the power to impose sanctions. 

As some one who struggles with grammatical cogency, I empathetically urge her to get a copy editor, someone who will catch her worst tendencies as a legal writer.