Summary Judgment is American Lawyer senior writer Susan Beck’s regular opinion column for the Litigation Daily.

Judge Richard Posner made headlines after he expressed some regret in his new book, “Reflections on Judging,” about approving an Indiana voter identification law in 2007. The 32-year veteran of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said he realizes that such laws are “now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.” My colleague Tony Mauro at the National Law Journal discussed Posner’s comment in a recent column. Posner also pointedly criticized the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling as “naive,” and blasted the court for tolerating political gerrymandering of Congressional districts.

This is all interesting, but I wish “Reflections on Judging” were a better read. Unless you’re fascinated by esoteric discussions of the merits of competing theories of legal philosophy, much of the book may make your eyes glaze over. It’s frustrating that Posner, who is a strong writer and stresses the importance of judges communicating in a way that’s accessible to laymen, doesn’t devote more of his book to real life events, instead of theory.

Still, this book contains enough nuggets of sharp observations, gripes, jabs, and practical words of advice to lawyers that it’s worth a look. One of Posner’s main complaints is that the legal process has been made needlessly complex by everyone in the profession: judges, lawyers, law clerks and law professors alike. He hates jargon, legal cliches, and fussy, tangled prose. I agree with all that. I’m not sure, however, it was necessary for Posner to engage in an exercise in one-upmanship by rewriting a a 1992 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court’s original opinion in United States v. Morris–which addressed whether a defendant had used a gun in a drug trafficking offense–was 3,237 words long; Posner’s snappy version is 602 words. His rewrite is much better, but did he really need to show off like this?

I was also surprised to see Posner mildly rebuke Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for not writing the first drafts of all of her own opinions, and often leaving that task to her clerks. Ginsberg has said that she doesn’t have the time to write these drafts. Posner instructs the 80-year-old justice to manage her time better, and even shows her how. Assuming that it should take her four hours to write a draft of an opinion, he calculates that she just needs 64 hours a year to write her opinions, based on an average of 16 opinions a year. If she shaved three percent off the time of her other judicial tasks, he notes, she could find the time for this writing. This may be helpful advice, but I can’t imagine drafting a Supreme Court opinion in just four hours. Posner must be a very fast writer.

Posner also offers the following opinion and comments:

  • For appellate advocates: Whenever possible, use pictures, maps, diagrams, and other visual aids in your briefs. But don’t bring visual props to your oral argument. That’s invariably a flop.