The Justice System Strengthening Program (JSSP) and the Kosovo Judicial Academy (KJA) recently concluded an ambitious project to improve the quality of legal writing and judicial decisions by developing a legal writing handbook for judges.  The handbook contains instructions and standardized templates for court decisions that will guide judges to improve the quality and consistency of court decisions.  Its content will be built into the KJA’s legal writing training module for judges so that future training is more skills-driven rather than theory-based.  In his remarks at the launch event held on August 10^th, USAID/Kosovo Program and Policy Director Paul Vaca stressed the importance of legal writing, noting that: “the written judgment is the culmination of the judicial decision-making process…. well-written judgments are crucial to promoting greater transparency and accountability in the justice system, and to building the public’s trust and confidence in the communities that judges serve.”  In addition to the new handbook, the JSSP will continue to work with the Kosovo Judicial Council and the courts to increase the publication of written judicial decisions – another crucial part of increasing transparency in Kosovo’s justice sector.