Law Professors, Law Schools

Advice From A Law Professor On How To Write An Op-Ed

Some tips so that your op-ed doesn’t cause you or your readers undue heartburn.

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There has been a lot of discussion about op-eds, recently.   As law professors search for new audiences so as to be relevant, they have chosen to write more of them.  What follows are tips so that your op-ed doesn’t cause you or your readers undue heartburn (i.e., only causes the heartburn you are seeking to cause).

As the New York Times points out, an op-ed “requires a clear thesis, backed by rigorously marshaled evidence, in the service of a persuasive argument.”  That means that merely stating your thesis throughout your op-ed is not sufficient.  Facts matter.  Logic matters.  Consistency matters.

Understand that the reader of your op-ed is not a mind reader.   You have about 700 words to convey your main idea clearly and succinctly.  Understand that the average reader does not have time for parsing out your subtle subtexts.  You aren’t the only author they are reading that day.  You will spend far more time writing the op-ed than the average reader will spend reading it.

If you fail to articulate your idea well, the reader will be left searching for clues implicit in the op-ed as to what you actually mean.  This shouldn’t be shocking to those of us who grade exams or read impenetrable legal writing.  If your writing isn’t clear and concise, expect greater misunderstanding and perhaps even greater backlash.

While looking for clues, the reader may misread what you’ve written.  I have had more than one e-mail accusing me of saying something in an op-ed that I didn’t see there.  However, you are showing bad form if you accuse readers of misreading what you’ve written if there is a near consensus in the feedback you receive about what you’ve written.  In that case, it is you who has misread what you wrote.  If you get lots of feedback suggesting you either implied or expressly stated something in the op-ed, then you might be humble enough to recognize that either you wrote something so poorly that a reasonable person could get that inference, or worse, perhaps you really did mean it.

The last three paragraphs may read like the children’s book, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.  That’s intentional.  Once you write an op-ed, you are no longer in control of it.  An op-ed is not an opportunity to lecture the public and run.  If you’re lucky, there will be intellectual debate and your readers and you will be better off for it.  If you’re unfortunate, you’ll get death threats.  But do not assume you can just step up on the public soapbox, and then step down and go about your business.  Writing an op-ed is not the classroom lecture writ large.

If you choose to reply to comments you receive about your op-ed, be kind and always take the high road.  Talk about the ideas.  DO NOT call your readers stupid, disingenuous, opposed to your political views, or otherwise demonstrate that you are in reality an academic bully.  Believe it or not, by being respectful I’ve even had the strange pleasure of coming to an understanding with someone who threatened me (the understanding was not about my death).

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There are several ways to tell if you’re being defensive.  The classic one is the fact that you really want to take the commenter down a peg.  You insult them and call them stupid.  Don’t do that classic bullying behavior.  Another is if you try the Trumpian defense.  That means if someone calls your argument racist or sexist, you argue that you can’t possibly be because you have a friend who is a person of color or a woman.  That has nothing to do with what you wrote, and tells the commentator more about your insecurity instead.

Even if you are tenured, there are consequences to writing an op-ed.  While I believe that tenure should protect professors and their ideas, there are limits.  Tenure is not a blanket license to insult people in an op-ed (save that for faculty meetings).  If you’ve written something about any controversial topic, there will be backlash.  You might be humble enough to consider whether some of it is rightly deserved.  As an example, if you’ve written an op-ed expressing your grand theory that sexual assault is over-reported and you do so in a callous and craven manner, you can expect at the very least that every sexual assault survivor will avoid your classes like the plague.  Rightly so.

There are consequences for your school, as well.  If you’ve written something widely perceived to be racist or sexist, understand you’ve just made the admissions department unhappy.  If your op-ed goes viral, you’ve made their jobs more difficult.  You also may have created a headache for your dean in terms of alumni relations.  For these reasons, I always give my dean a heads up if I’m publishing something controversial, such as whether or not there should be two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence.

Some law professors, fearful of backlash, have taken to publishing things anonymously.  I suppose I’m anonymous, at least for these purposes.  However, I have always assumed that I’ll be outed some day.  If you write anonymously, you should assume the same.  That means I still have to regulate my arguments: I tend to only write mean things about a former dean (and everyone already knows how I feel about him, anyway).

But writing anonymously doesn’t protect you anyway if you stick to one anonymous name.  For example, LawProfBlawg is a brand.  Thus, to the extent that I say something stupid, there can be legitimate backlash. I once nearly shut down LPB because I said I was not a fan of Beyonce’s song “Lemonade,” which nearly caused viral backlash (Beyonce fans: Note I said I was being stupid).  There are real consequences here, too, even though LPB is not a “hit-and-run” anonymous account.  I’m here, and have been here for years.   And my contact info is below.

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LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here.  He is way funnier on social media, he claims.  Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

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