For bloggers and writers, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones is indispensable. In terms of a writing “how-to” guide, it’s one of the few that have been canonized. There a few good reasons for this. One of them is because each little nugget of a chapter stands on its own. One of those chapters is titled “A List of Topics for Writing Practice,” from which I found inspiration for this post.
As a lawyer, especially one who works in the solo or small firm setting, you’ve no doubt seen that lawyer blogs have become more important. We can endlessly debate whether or not blogging and using social media is necessary for success, but if you are blogging, and because the blank page can make or break you, here’s a list of 13 topics for lawyer blogs:
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Got some holiday money or an Amazon gift card burning a hole in your pocket? Ross Guberman‘s book Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation’s Top Advocates is worth every penny. It currently retails for less than twenty dollars on Amazon. If you’ve got a Kindle it’s only $3.79, although some reviewers criticized the e-book formatting.
The book repeats advice we have all heard before: don’t use block quotes, don’t use legalese, tell a good story, etc. But Guberman doesn’t just give advice. The value in this book comes from numerous examples from real briefs filed by writers like John Roberts, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Barack Obama, and others.
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In my experience, I am bored to tears with CLEs. Not so with Stuart Teicher’s CLE on persuasive legal writing, a down-to-earth manifesto about what it means to write well in the age of Twitter. Teicher coins the term “shortwriting,” which means “being able to persuade in short bursts and finding a way to convey complex thoughts and multiple ideas clearly and quickly.”
(Please note that I am not being paid to sell you on Stuart Teicher or his shortwriting concept—I am simply compelled to write about CLEs that won’t bore you to tears.)
Keep reading to learn more about shortwriting, as well as a point I believe Teicher should add to his presentation: that fear has no place in legal writing.
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It’s inevitable. Even if you write like Faulkner (or perhaps especially if you write like Faulkner) there will come a time when the product you produce is not the product that the partner wanted. This is painful, but it can also present an opportunity to impress people with your phenomenal ability to rebound and integrate constructive criticism into the next draft.
Some of the strategies detailed below are my own, but many are stolen from my peers.
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Read most any published piece of fiction and it’s been revised and edited like mad. The same goes for a lot of other pieces of writing, from essays to literary journalism. There’s a reason for this: putting the words down is relatively easy (presuming the blank page hasn’t scared you frozen from the start). But getting from first draft to final draft is more difficult. It’s a process of elimination. If you want to make your legal writing scream with persuasion and polish and style, follow this brief guide to editing like a pro.
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First, read this short story by David Foster Wallace. It won’t take you longer than 15 minutes. It’s that short. I challenge you to read this and not get completely absorbed.
Then read more below about the “fictional dream” and how to create superb legal writing by making the dream come alive in three steps: (1) Learn to recognize the fictional dream; (2) eliminate distractions; and (3) use telling details.
Ultimately, the fictional dream is the most important part of legal writing because it means persuading your reader to agree with you, rather than with opposing counsel.
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Divorce is the topic in Lorrie Moore’s short story “Paper Losses,” and in this story the protagonist, Kit (“Katherine” in the petition) struggles with the fact that her husband has, figuratively, turned into a space alien.
In this story, you get Kit’s perspective—including her take on the words “irretrievably broken.” She asks herself, “What second-rate poet had gotten hold of the divorce laws?”
Here’s how not to be a second-rate poet when you write.
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Guest post by Danielle Rodabaugh.
Being well-informed of your profession and wanting to share that knowledge with others is admirable. However, with the virtually limitless amount of information available online today, you can’t expect significant feedback just because you published any old law article on your blog or website. Whether you’re trying to build a strong readership for your blog or attract potential clients with a company website, you need to turn boring law topics into engaging, relevant reads.
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If you’re a lawyer, you know a thing or two about direct marketing, even if you don’t call it that. Direct marketing is the business of persuading someone (a potential client) to do something (contact you). And if you’re a sole practitioner or work in a small firm, odds are you’ve tried your hand at writing a bit of advertising copy.
If your ad copy was any good, you’ve been reaping the benefits: you’ve persuaded someone to call or send an email. In other words, you’ve given yourself the opportunity to turn more non-clients into clients, which is the primary function of your law firm website.
If clients haven’t been beating down your door, don’t lose heart. You, too, can write good copy, if you understand what copy is and what it isn’t. Part of writing good copy is knowing what not to do.
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Many of us lawyers are practitioners in the art of deep reading. Deep reading is getting into the complete line of published and unpublished cases in your niche, footnotes and all. Deep reading is also tackling the treatises and journals on that niche. Make no mistake. Deep reading is necessary for mastery (which also happens to be the name of a book I recommend below), and can help you become a great lawyer.
And deep reading is better than no reading.
To paraphrase bestselling author Stephen King (and any untold number of writers who have anything to say about the subject of writing):
If you don’t read, you don’t write.
At least, you don’t write very well.
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