Jle Writing Style

Writing Style (jle-writing-style)

When to trigger

• Identification and robustness are settled and the paper needs its final exposition pass
• The introduction buries the legal question and the effect under institutional or doctrinal setup
• The abstract does not state the headline effect of the rule with its uncertainty
• The prose reads either like a generic economics paper that forgot the law, or like a law-review article that forgot the economics

The JLE introduction arc

JLE prose is plain, direct, and institution-aware. The introduction should follow the law-and-economics arc: the legal/regulatory question → why the institution makes the answer matter → why naive estimates fail → the legal source of variation that solves it → the headline effect of the rule with a standard error → the mechanism (deterrence/price/quality) → the legal or policy lesson → brief roadmap. A reader who is an economist but not a lawyer should grasp the rule and the answer in the first paragraph; the identification should be legible by the end of the second. Get the law right without writing like a law review: explain the rule's mechanics in economists' terms.

Writing craft

1. Lead with the answer about the rule, not the institutional history. The first paragraph states what the legal rule does and roughly how big; the doctrinal background comes later.
2. Numbers with units and SEs in sentences. "The damages cap cut malpractice claims by 8% (s.e. 3)" — the magnitude lives in the prose, not only the table.
3. Name the legal variation plainly. "We use the staggered adoption of state damages caps" beats euphemism; JLE readers want the identification stated.
4. Explain the institution in economists' terms. State who is bound, when the rule binds, and the counterfactual rule — but in one efficient paragraph, not a treatise.
5. Calibrate the claim. State the estimand (ATT / LATE / local-at-threshold) and what it does not establish; over-claiming a local legal effect as universal is a frequent referee complaint.
6. Chicago author-date citations, plain English, active voice; write the abstract and intro last.

Checklist

• Abstract states the legal question + design + headline effect (units & SE) + lesson
• Intro ¶1 gives the legal/regulatory question and the headline number with uncertainty — no throat-clearing
• The institution and the identifying legal variation appear by ¶2–3, in economists' terms
• Magnitudes written into sentences with units and standard errors
• Estimand and scope stated; external-validity / cross-jurisdiction claim calibrated, not inflated
• Chicago author-date style; plain English, active voice; abstract/intro written last

Anti-patterns

• An introduction that spends a page on legal/doctrinal history before stating the economic question
• Writing like a law-review article (string citations, doctrinal exegesis) instead of economic analysis
• Writing like a generic economics paper that never explains how the rule actually works
• Reporting "statistically significant" without the magnitude, units, or SE in the prose
• Over-claiming a local/LATE legal effect as a general population effect across all jurisdictions
• Polishing the intro before identification and robustness are settled

Worked vignette (illustrative)

A first-draft intro opens with two pages on the history of medical-malpractice doctrine, then a TWFE specification, then "the effect is statistically significant." The JLE rewrite leads with the answer: "Do caps on malpractice damages reduce litigation? Exploiting the staggered adoption of state damages caps, we find caps cut malpractice claims by 8% (s.e. 3), driven by the marginal low-value suit rather than catastrophic-injury cases." The legal variation is named in the next sentence, the deterrence-of-marginal-suits mechanism and the calibrated scope follow, and the doctrinal history moves to Section 2. An economist who is not a lawyer now grasps the rule and the result in the first paragraph.