Legal Commentary

I am very good at making my life more difficult than it needs to be, so much so that my good friend says of me that never was so much good advice wasted on one person.  It tells you almost all you need to know about me in this regard that I intentionally had a baby the year before coming up for tenure.  I am especially good at making writing more difficult than it needs to be.  Thus, like a divorced person who issues marital advice, I thought I would share advice on how to make writing an article easy and efficient.

My first piece of advice is one I follow occasionally, but not nearly often enough: You should probably try to write about a topic you know something about either because you learned it in practice or have already written about it or have taught it.  For example, if you are a defamation expert, perhaps you should consider writing about defamation.  You should probably let other people write about jurisprudence or the public forum doctrine.  Yes, you can write about these things, but you will have to absorb every bit of the case law and secondary literature, which tends to be a little time consuming.  Being intellectually curious is fine, but being an intellectual dilettante is definitely inefficient.

The same general advice extends to learning a new body of non-legal theory to use in writing your article.  If you've already invested in learning some aspect of cognitive psychology or literary theory, perhaps you should consider using it for more than one article.  I know people who can sketch out a scholarly agenda exploring five different torts using, say, the sociology of Georg (not a typo) Simmel.  After they write the five articles using the same theoretical foundation, they are able to turn the whole thing into a book with almost no effort.  Aim to be like these people!  Do not get bored on article number two or feel like you've said all you have to say on the topic.  Keep going until you publish that lovely scholarly monograph.

My second piece of advice is one I actually follow most of the time:  Do not feel compelled to read everything ever written on your topic before you begin writing.  Try to force yourself to put thoughts on paper as quickly as you possibly can.  Remember you can always go back and modify later.  It is my experience that reading too much too early actually blocks creativity.  I should caution, however, that there is a downside to this advice.  Inevitably, when you are half- or even three-quarters of the way through, you will read an article and believe that you are preempted and that the author of the article has already said everything worth saying on your topic better than you could ever hope to say it.  But you will be wrong.  When you read the article more closely, you will realize that the author is saying something very different or that he has missed something important.  Then you will deal with the article that made you have a heart attack and go on with your life!!

My third piece of advice is one I never, ever follow, unfortunately.  You should not pay too much attention to style while writing the first draft.  You should get all your ideas on paper and then worry about editing.  In no event should you write and rewrite the introduction fifteen or twenty times until you have worked out in your head exactly what it is you want to say.  In no event should you agonize over every word as you are writing and try to make the draft perfect on the first go.  Trust me when I say that this is a very inefficient way to write.

My fourth piece of advice, which is one I've learned to follow over time, is to let your research assistant fill in the footnotes.  Worrying too much about footnotes while you're writing not only slows things down but breaks the flow of your article.  You can obsess about the Blue Book as much as you like later.  [As a side note, you should obsess about the Blue Book before you send it out.  It isn't fair to the law review editors otherwise.] 

My fifth piece of advice is not to worry if you rue the day you ever decided to write on your topic by the end of the article.  I'm pretty sure everyone feels that way by the end of a long,hard slog through the arcana required to produce a competent law review article.  If you don't, I don't want to know about it.

If you are still reading at this point, my final piece of advice is the most important:  Learn what your own process for producing an article is, and don't obsess about all those other people who can produce an article faster and more efficiently than you can.  If you somehow manage to be productive writing in a completely inefficient manner, you might as well embrace your process.  It works for me--most of the time.

[I'm tempted to write a follow-up post called "What Not to Do Before You Get Tenure."]