Category Archives: Law Practice

The biggest impediment

The biggest impediment to better legal writing isn’t the lack of quality instruction in law school.

It’s law practice.

Deadlines. Time limits. Conventions. Fear. Supervisor expectations. Local rules. Forms and templates. Money. Inertia. Complacency.

All these prevent lawyers from taking the appropriate time to polish their writing. For example, even if a lawyer has four weeks to write a brief, that’s not enough because the same lawyer has three other briefs, four memos, and eight letters to write at the same time, not to mention the 150 e-mail messages to read and respond to.

Revising, editing, and rewriting are what make mediocre writing good and good writing great, but lawyers don’t have enough time for them.

David Mellinkoff captured the nature of the busy law practice and its effects on legal writing:

Sometimes urgency forces precedence over everything else. Get it done. Get something out. We’ve got to file. This is a “rush.” The writer is under pressure to take shortcuts. This has become the normal environment of most legal writing, and is one of the principal reasons why so much of it is so bad.

David Mellinkoff, Legal Writing: Sense and Nonsense 116 (1982).

The unfortunate fact is that this kind of rushed approach often gets the job done—it’s often good enough or has to be. One reason it gets by is that many of us have been writing this way—under a deadline and without sufficient time devoted to polishing—since college:

Many young lawyers seem to have survived writing assignments in college and law school (with the exception of law-review writing) by turning in what were basically first drafts, lightly edited to fix glaring errors. They are unprepared to regard editing as a serious, laborious activity.

Stephen V. Armstrong & Timothy P. Terrell, Thinking Like a Writer: A Lawyer’s Guide to Effective Writing and Editing 298 (2003).

And so practicing lawyers continue to churn out mediocre or poor writing; the exigencies of modern life and law practice almost require it.

Don’t Rest on Plateaus

Are the legal-writing classes you had in law school the last writing training you’ll need for your career?

If you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, was a law-school class the last bankruptcy training you’ll need?

That’s your answer. Legal writing is like any skill or substantive topic: there’s always more to learn, and there’s always room for improvement. But sometimes, busy legal writers rest on plateaus. We produce good-enough legal writing, and we’re comfortable on that plateau, so we stay. Here’s some advice for moving on.

1. Admit you have room to improve. When I was a full-time lawyer, I thought I was a good writer, above average. Now I realize I hadn’t been that good. I’d been quite mediocre. I was poorly educated about the standards of high-level professional writing, and I was ignorant of my own limitations. Was I unique? Probably not. Many lawyers believe themselves to be good writers, above average within the profession, but I say this: The first step to becoming a good legal writer is to admit you have room to improve.

2. Get some references. Once you’ve admitted you have room to improve your writing—that you’re resting on a plateau—start learning. A great way to raise your writing IQ is to consult the experts. When you have a question about writing, don’t rely on half-remembered “rules” from high-school English. Look it up. But where? Here are two websites I like:

But if you’re serious about legal writing, you’ll need some reference books, and here are three I recommend:

  • The Redbook, by Garner
  • The Texas Law Review Manual on Usage and Style
  • Just Writing: Grammar, Punctuation, and Style for the Legal Writer, by Enquist & Oates

Your goal is to have reliable references handy to answer questions. Other professional writers consult writing references, and lawyers should, too.

3. Read writing books. If you’re serious about getting off that plateau, you’ll have to do more than consult references. You’ll have to study the principles of good writing and good legal writing. But how, when you’re busy? Set a goal to read one book on writing every year. Here are some I like

  • Lifting the Fog of Legalese, by Kimble
  • The Lawyer’s Guide to Writing Well, by Goldstein & Lieberman
  • Writing with Style, by Trimble.

These books are great sources of writing knowledge, and they’re also well written. Reading the best books teaches you writing and exposes you to good writing.

4. Practice what you learn. You’re reading about writing and you’re consulting writing references. Now practice what you’re learning. Of course, for any working lawyer, writing practice is part of the job: you’re writing all the time. Yet we tend to rest on plateaus—we write as we always have, with the same habits, the same limitations. (That’s why studying writing is so important. Practice without study is usually just repetition.) So experiment with things you’re learning. Try new techniques and master new approaches to writing.

5. Edit better. We all know editing is crucial to good writing. Most of us can’t produce high-quality writing in one draft (or even two). We must edit, so here are some suggestions for getting off the editing plateau.

Leave plenty of time, even though it’s hard to do. How much? One pro recommends half the time on a writing project. Debra Hart May, Proofreading Plain and Simple 46 (1997).

Use more than one technique when editing: Do you edit on the computer screen? That’s fine, but it’s not enough. Do some editing on a hard copy, too; we read and react differently to screen text and printed text. Do you read the text out loud? That’s great: you’re using your ears, not just your eyes, to help you edit. Now go further and have a trusted colleague read it and suggest some edits. Do you read the document in reverse, from the last sentence to the first? Good. This technique tricks your mind, so you’re not familiar with the text; familiarity leads to poor editing. Now read only the topic sentences. Next read the opening and closing paragraphs.

Mediocre writing becomes good writing only through editing.

6. Accept critique. Here’s the hardest part: seek and welcome critiques and candid suggestions for improving your writing. This one’s tough because it’s natural to be defensive about your writing—maybe even insecure. I know I am. But when I avoid critique, I don’t improve much. I rest on a plateau. So open yourself to honest critique. Find a trusted colleague, friend, or supervisor, someone whose judgment and writing you respect. Then ask for suggestions, and take them to heart. The best writers are open to critique.

Now move off that plateau.

_____

If you’d like to comment on this or any post, please email me. I’ve had to disable comments because of excessive spam. Sorry.

Lawyers are Professional Writers

For three main reasons, you, as a lawyer, are a professional writer.

1. Lawyers are paid to write.
That takes you out of amateur status. And most of us don’t write a little. We write a lot. I remember when I began working at a law firm that I was surprised at how much writing there was. “Gosh,” I thought. “Why didn’t anyone tell me I was going to be doing so much was writing?” If writing is a significant part of your job, you’re a professional writer.

2. Lawyers’ writing deals with complex topics and affects rights, money, and liberty.
Usually, there’s a lot riding on your writing: your client’s money, your client’s rights and, in the criminal setting, your client’s liberty or even life. If writing with that kind of pressure weren’t enough, there’s the complexity of the subject matter. The law is complicated, and writing about complex topics with a lot at stake is demanding work. Grasping the complex subject matter and writing about it effectively are the hallmarks of a professional writer—a lawyer.

3. Lawyers’ written work is subject to serious scrutiny.
Legal writing gets scrutinized and criticized (not to mention satirized). Your legal documents can end up in front of multiple audiences, and each has a chance to evaluate your writing.

  • Your supervisor, who can hire and fire, promote and demote, gets to inspect your writing.
  • Opposing counsel gets paid to find your mistakes—sort of a professional writing critic.
  • Your client, the one paying you to write, can examine your writing, of course.
  • And in litigation the judge is, well, judging it.

Writing getting that much scrutiny is professional writing.

Convinced? I hope so. If not, go read The Lawyer’s Guide to Writing Well, by Goldstein and Lieberman. It convinced me lawyers are professional writers. Once you’re convinced, you can take some steps to act like a professional writer. That idea is a theme of The Lawyer’s Guide to Writing Well: lawyers are professional writers, and they should act like it.

Act like a professional writer.
Professional writers consult writing references, and lawyers should, too. I recommend The Redbook, by Garner, but there are others: Just Writing by Oates and Enquist and the Texas Law Review Manual on Usage & Style. Once you’ve started using a writing reference, try to get others to do it. Having a reliable and consistent source for answering writing questions will raise the writing IQ of everyone in your office.

Professional writers continue to learn. For lawyers, that could mean attending a legal-writing CLE. Better yet, you could volunteer to present a legal-writing CLE. A great way to improve your writing knowledge is to write a paper about legal writing and then teach a class about it. Continuing to learn could also mean reading books about writing. I’ve recommended many in this column, but here are two gems I’ve never mentioned: On Writing Well by Zinsser; Legal Writing: Sense and Nonsense by Mellinkoff.

Professional writers use editors. Lawyers need them too. You have several options, from more expensive to less expensive. You could hire an in-house editor or writing specialist (expensive). You could have every lawyer in the office attend training on copy editing (moderate). Or you could ask a trusted colleague to edit your writing (less expensive). Whatever you do, remember what professional writers know: bad writing becomes good and good writing becomes great only by editing.

Here’s one more idea: start a writing group. Select or invite a group of lawyers to meet over lunch once a week to discuss good writing. Have everyone take a turn offering a document for the group to read in advance and then discuss at the meeting. You’ll get two benefits: the writing IQ of everyone in the group is bound to increase, and you’ll learn that accepting constructive feedback is a great way to improve your writing.

And improving is part of being a professional writer.