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The art of writing judgments

When the Associate Chief Justice of the Quebec Superior Court André Wery was nominated to the bench in 1997, he considered he knew how to write well. Admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1975, he practiced for nearly 23 years in general and commercial litigation at the firm Desjardins Ducharme, and felt that he had honed his skills by writing hundreds of opinions and just as many briefs. “I must admit that I had quite a bit of confidence in my talent to write law,” admitted Justice Wery before a packed audience. But shortly after being nominated, the chief justice handed Judge Wery a bunch of documents including a small handbook entitled “Ēcrire la decision” (Writing judgments). Penned by Louise Mailhot, a lawyer who served as a Quebec Superior Court judge and then for a nine-year spell from 1987 to 2006 served on the Quebec Court of Appeal, the handbook has become “a must-have” for judges writing judgments, says Wery. While leafing through the handbook, “I began to hold doubts about the way I wrote,” …