Academic

Faculty Blogs: Legal Writing Tip - Write and Edit Just a Little Bit

To those interested in improving their writing, Bryan Garner recommends not only just a little bit of reading but also just a little bit of writing and just a little bit of editing.  Two of his especially innovative and useful ideas are to keep a daily journal and to form a writing group.

In the essay The Benefits of Keeping a Daily Journal (adapted from Student Lawyer (Sept. 2004), Garner suggests that you will dramatically improve your writing if you spend ten minutes each day writing a factual description of some of the day's events.  He states,

You may think that a journal like this is simply too far removed from "legal" writing to do you much good.  Don't make this mistake.  In chronicling your daily routine, you'll be drawing on your powers of description and analysis.  The better you become at it, the better you'll become at writing legal memos, client letters, briefs, and even contracts.  You'll be developing deftness with the written word.

In the article Why You Should Start a Writing Group (adapted from Student Lawyer (Jan. 2006)), Garner recommends to new lawyers that they spend ninety minutes once a month meeting to edit each others' writing.  Four lawyers should spend approximately five minutes reading another young lawyer's writing.  The four lawyers then spend approximately another five minutes providing verbal feedback to the writer.  They also provide the writer written comments.  The same approximately ten-minute process is then followed for the writing of each other lawyer.

Garner concludes, "You'll see in almost every session how a piece of writing can be analyzed on many levels.  And you'll begin to analyze on those levels yourself." 

Full post as published by University of Louisville Law Faculty on February 11, 2009 (boomark / email).