LEGAL WRITING

The reason is that legal writing is the central medium with which a lawyer communicates his or her
work. The most brilliant legal mind will have a difficult time in the legal profession, if their writing skills
are not on par with their ability to effectively read, research, analyze, and reason about the law and
the facts of the case.

If you can effectively communicate in written form, your reader will fully comprehend your analysis
without having to retrace all of the steps you needed to take to get to your conclusion. You will save
your supervisor time and effort, and you will establish yourself as a professional who is ready to excel
as a lawyer.

Be clear, comprehensive, and concise in offering complete and correct information. Leave out
irrelevant remarks that merely divert the focus of what is important. Keep your audience in mind
when determining how much detail is required to make yourself understood. It can be helpful to
remind yourself that you are attempting to advise, or persuade, as the case may be, and not to write
a work of literature or poetry.

Secondly, take the time to edit what you have written, ideally more than once. Every mistake in
spelling or grammar will make your reader stumble for a moment, pause, and perhaps reread the
sentence. Such an interruption takes away the focus from the argument you were trying to make and
it will inevitably leave the impression of a lack of care and, if repeated too often, of competence as
well.
If flawless grammar and spelling are not what law school teachers commonly praise your work for,
there is still hope. In the 21 st century, the technology exists to mitigate such deficiencies. Much of
such software is free and user-friendly. Nevertheless, it may be good advice to attempt becoming
comfortable with the vocabulary, style, structure, and tone of voice lawyers use daily. The obvious
way to hone this skill is to read court decisions, legal journals, and other relevant and quality
materials.
Of course, polished legal writing skills do not come overnight. Seize every opportunity to practice. If
you get the opportunity to work under the supervision of an experienced lawyer and draft legal
documents for him or her, make sure to read the final, edited product, so you can see what changes
were necessary and what you can improve. If you are still in law school, do take a course on legal
writing. It will without a doubt have a notable effect on your performance in every other class and on
your proficiency as a legal practitioner.
Lawyers write a wide range of other things, too: contracts, wills, trusts, pleadings,
motions, interrogatories, affidavits, stipulations, judicial opinions, orders,
judgments, statutes, administrative regulations, and more. But instruction in these
other forms of legal writing might wait until after you have learned more about law
and procedure, perhaps in upper-class drafting courses, clinics, and simulation
courses
Good legal writers write for their readers: “effective writers do not merely express, but transform their
ideas to meet the needs of their audience.”In a brief, the audience is the judge, not the client or
opposing counsel. To write persuasively, a lawyer must grab the judge’s attention quickly, argue
concisely, and express clearly the relief sought.