Brief Writing

Career Center: I’ll Take the Pen is Mightier for $500, Alex

By

It’s inevitable, but at some point during your summer clerkship, you will have to write, and odds are, you will be writing a lot. Words are the currency of lawyers. Once you graduate from law school, you will be paid hundreds of dollars an hour to write brilliant briefs, ironclad contracts, and demand letters that would even make Dick Cheney cry. With that in mind, you will need to proof and analyze everything you write during your summer clerkship –- even if it is as an informal as a one-page memo or quick email.

This week’s Career Center Summer Associate Tips Series focused on helping you develop your writing skills, and is brought to you by Lateral Link’s Frank Kimball, an expert recruiter and former Biglaw hiring partner.

Read on for more information on how to manage your written work product as a summer associate….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Career Center: I’ll Take the Pen is Mightier for $500, Alex”

Small Firms, Big Lawyers: Shutting Lawyers Up, and the Power of Constraints

By

Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Small Firms, Big Lawyers, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.

I’m reporting to you live from Chicago at the 25th Annual ABA TechShow, where an amazing group of passionate lawyers from around the country have gathered to talk and teach about the future of law practice. While many of the programs deal with technology, the underlying theme seems to be that change is coming to our industry, and we should probably figure this stuff out before it’s too late.

As Elie reported yesterday, I had the chance to present at the IgniteLaw 2011 program, which made for a pre-Conference kickoff Sunday night. I’m not going to talk about my presentation here — suffice to say it included references to Blade Runner, cannibalistic English food, and Hale and Dorr’s WilmerHale’s invention of the billable hour in 1919. (That was the same year that Prohibition started. Coincidence? I think not.)

Instead, I’m going to talk about the constraints placed on every speaker — because they were frickin’ crazy.…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Small Firms, Big Lawyers: Shutting Lawyers Up, and the Power of Constraints”

22 Comments

Small Firms, Big Lawyers: The Perfect Font … To Show You Don’t Care

By

Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Small Firms, Big Lawyers, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.

If you want to send a message that you really don’t care what your document looks like, or that you never really gave it any thought, then this is the font for you. It might mean that you don’t really understand computers very well, and never bothered to learn how to change the default font. It probably also means that you never took a moment to consider the judge (or the client or whoever is reading what you wrote) and how she will have to slog through yet another gray document filled with too-small text that looks like every other one she’s read today.

But mostly it just means that you’re apathetic, and that you don’t consider what you write to be work worthy of craftsmanship.

So what is this font that says so much about you, and what should you use instead?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Small Firms, Big Lawyers: The Perfect Font … To Show You Don’t Care”

140 Comments

Inside Straight: Classic Bad Introductions

By

Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

I know, I know: This column is not supposed to be about written advocacy.

And I know, I know: No one needs my smug suggestions, because no one who reads “Above the Law” ever makes any mistakes.

But the legal writing community keeps urging me on (on the web here, here, and here (note her jab at my “commenters”), for example, and off-line constantly). The people who fret about this stuff seem to think that these lessons are worth repeating, so I’m adding one more column on legal writing to the collection.

Here are three possible introductions to one brief. I saw all three types repeatedly while I was in private practice, and I’ve seen all three since I’ve been in-house. (I’ve seen the worst type — the first — only once during my in-house days, and we chatted with outside counsel about what we expect to see in the future.)

So, without further ado, two bad (but typical) introductions, followed by one good one, all for use in the same case….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Inside Straight: Classic Bad Introductions”

79 Comments

Quote of the Day: The Best Brief Is a Brief Brief

By

We add that the appellants’ brief is rambling, and would be more effective if compressed to 14,000 words.

– Judge Richard Posner, in a benchslap that denied appellants’ motion to file an oversized brief — and summarily affirmed the district court (full opinion here, via How Appealing).

19 Comments
Page 2 of 212