Want some great tips on writing?

See here.

A great explanation of why law professors care about writing and compliance with rules.

Over at the Conglomerate (here).

Why are we professors so curmudgeonly?

Possibly because we're trying to transition you from learning for the sake of learning (college) to learning because you're likely to represent clients later.

Why you don't want to tick off a law professor by doing a poor job of editing her article.

Here. 

It's not too late to avoid bad writing habits.

See here.  You'll read plenty of bad writing in judicial opinions, law review articles, and legislation.  This essay by George Orwell might help you avoid perpetuating the bad writing that you're reading.

Punctuation matters. I mean it.

And I loved this timely post.

Bad writing doesn't just make you look dumb.

It makes you look "unteachable."  In Michael Skapinker's opinion piece ("If you want a job, learn your it’s and its") in this morning's Financial Times (here), he points out that adults who don't know the difference between "it's" and "its" are demonstrating that they have a learning curve that's too long.  Here's my favorite quote from the article (and don't forget that this opinion piece is from a non-US paper):

Why, then, does mixing up “it’s” and “its” matter when it rarely causes confusion? Because, as Mr[.] Wiens says, if you haven’t learnt the difference by now, what else haven’t you learnt?

So true.  I cringe when people I know can't tell the difference between "it's" and "its", or "your" and "you're", or "there" and "their."  Maybe there's a learning style problem--I hope so, because otherwise I'm looking at people who don't care enough to learn a set of rules that pre-teens are taught.

Why writing well matters, part n.

See this news story, especially about the court's reaction to a long, wordy brief.

A wonderful article about good writing.

Judge Alan S. Trust's article, Brevity, published in the June 2012 American Bankruptcy Institute's Journal, is a must-read (here).

Your writing matters. Learn the rules of grammar.

Today's article in the Wall Street Journal, "This Embarrasses You and I [sic]" (here), is a perfect illustration of why good writing is so important.  Bad writing (poor grammar, poor spelling, poor analysis, verbosity) makes you look dumb. 

In today's job market, where there are far too many lawyers trying to get (or keep) far too few positions, you need to remember the three things good lawyers do:

1.  They're good at analyzing problems and coming up with viable solutions.
2.  They communicate well.
3.  They're ethical.

That's what you need to be a good--maybe eventually great--lawyer.  Fancy law degrees are great, but they'll only get you in the door.  Your own performance is what keeps you there.

Here's a comparison for you to remember:  I want my surgeon to be able to communicate well with me.  Surgeons cut.  They think about cutting; they cut; they think about the cuts they've done.  Writing isn't a job requirement, per se, but I sure want what my surgeon writes in my medical files to be accurate and understandable.  If my surgeon didn't know the basic rules of grammar, I'd start obsessing about what other gaps he had in his education.  And lawyers actually are supposed to write well, so it's even more important for you to prove that you know the writing rules.

To steal a line (or to do a jazz riff on it--I couldn't find the exact quote) from Oprah:  be your best self.

Dear current generation of law students: here's what we really think about your writing abilities.

Here.

New York Times makes my comma-loving day.

See here and here.

Dear Law Review Editors:

Thank you very much for (1) soliciting or (2) accepting my article.  I'm happy to publish it in your journal.

I truly appreciate the hard work that you did in cite-checking and editing my article.  You cleaned up some problems and made it better. 

One complaint, though:  you need to remember that my article will be published under my name, not yours.  Therefore, I will reject all of your attempts to "clean up" my writing by replacing my informal style with your more formal one.

I'm sorry if law school gave you the impression that you must use stuffy writing in order to write well.  That's incorrect.  The best contracts are written with straightforward language.  The best briefs are those with simple, declarative sentences and active voice.

I know that some of my law professor colleagues write more formally than I do, and there's nothing wrong with the way that they write.  That's their choice, and I respect it.  But I also respect the choice of those who write less formally, and I include myself in the latter group.

When you're starting out, you find your own voice first by imitating the voice of more senior lawyers and then, slowly, figuring out your most authentic way of communicating.  Once you have your own authentic voice, treasure it.  Being true to yourself will take you far in life.

Of course, in order to break the rules of formal writing, you must know them.  So if you're weak on rules of grammar or punctuation, learn them.  Then you can decide when and how to break (some of) them.

Writing is like jazz.  Jazz is great because it knows the rules of classical music and chooses when and where to break those rules.

Find your jazz voice.  I have mine.

Wonderful opinion from the 7th Circuit about why writing matters.

See here.  Good writing is part of competence--well, at least decent writing is, and bad writing isn't.

Yes, that's what we need: more reliance on the numbers during the hiring season.

See this post on TaxProf Blog (here).  I agree with the idea that law students should have plenty of options when it comes to finding jobs, but this system seems to me to undercut the employers' ability to find the diamonds in the rough.

I'm going to bet that every employer that subscribes is going to want "top 10%, Law Review, judicial clerkship" folks.  Those folks don't need a huge amount of help finding jobs--and I think that focusing only on these criteria is causing just that type of mismatch between employer and employee that triggers the attrition in BigLaw associate classes.  These criteria are some indication of talent, but they don't--in and of themselves--indicate a candidate's other necessary abilities for success.  (Well, Law Review, at least, indicates that the candidate can probably research and write well and can work well in a team environment.)

Cutting out the interview stage only makes sense when employers are only asking about "top 10%-ish" information and not asking about those qualities that will lead to success in their particular business environment.  What employers should do instead is figure out what attributes they really need and focus their interviews to learn if a candidate has those attributes in abundance.

Legal writing matters.

See here.

Between now and Thanksgiving--some advice for 1Ls.

OK, 1Ls:  you're probably exhausted right now.  You're working on your Legal Writing papers--which to many of you will feel as if you're writing in another language, on another planet--and you're starting to outline your first-semester courses.  You feel as if you've been drinking from a fire hose with all of the information you've been learning.  And you are starting to get heartburn / nightmares about finals.  What should you be doing right now?

1.  Legal writing matters.  Don't blow off your Legal Writing papers, even if your school makes the course a pass/fail course.  Legal writing = legal thinking, so for every minute that you spend drafting your papers, you're actually building your skills for exam-writing.  Think of your papers as two-fers:  fulfilling a course's requirements and learning step-by-step legal analysis, which is the skill that exams will be testing.  Moreover, most legal employers now are bemoaning the execreble (look it up!) writing skills of baby lawyers.  You'll be able to stand out later if you work hard on your legal writing skills now.

2.  Outlines are a tool for answering exams; they're not an end in themselves.  Our book gives you several different options for outlining your  courses.  There's not a single outline format that works best, and your professors aren't going to grade your outlines, so you need to figure out what type of outline will help you prepare for step #3.

3.  Start taking practice exams.  Yes, we know:  you don't know "the law" yet.  You haven't (a) started outlining or (b) finished outlining.  But here's the point:  MOST OF YOUR GRADES WILL BE BASED ON YOUR EXAM PERFORMANCE.  You've never taken law school exams before, so you need to learn the skill set that exams require:  issue identification, application of the facts in the hypo to the rules of law; ignoring red herrings; and prioritizing your discussion points to maximize your grade.  (Yes, we have two chapters devoted to exam-taking.) 

4.  Prepare to be unprepared.  Roughly two days after your courses end, you should STOP OUTLINING and start drilling for exams, even if you haven't finished your outlines.  It's more important to find out what you don't know (by taking practice exams) and to build your exam skills (yep, by taking practice exams) than it is to finish your outlines. 

5.  Prepare to work in groups.  Even if you prefer going solo during the semester, take practice exams with some of your law school colleagues.  You'll see where your blind spots are--and get a feel for the many ways to write exam answers--if you compare notes on your practice exams.

6.  EXERCISE.  Then exercise some more.  Exercise = reduced stress.  Reduced stress = better exam performance.