When Your Only Contact With Readers Is Virtual, Writing Skills Matter More Than Ever
Learn to 'think like a writer' to communicate with even the toughest audiences.
Picture this: A few weeks into a difficult matter, your toughest client tells you, “Well, I guess you really do know how to think like a lawyer.” You feel a momentary glow, because there’s at least a chance it’s a compliment, even if a grudging one. But then they add, “Yeah, and you write like a lawyer, too.” Ouch. You thought your writing was just fine: precise, logical and, even better, free of jargon. What’s the problem?
It’s not that you write badly, but that lawyers face a tougher task than most writers ever confront. Although your subject matter can be complex and technical, your readers are impatient, often irascible, and occasionally hostile. Some writers can simplify their content to keep their readers happy. You do not have that luxury. Some writers can expect their readers to follow along patiently until an analysis or story reaches its end. You cannot.
As a result, legal writing requires two key skills law schools seldom teach. The first: imposing on dense, complicated material an organization that is not only logical, but also makes it as easy as possible for readers to absorb and remember the substance. Even if your raw material is as convoluted as the Rocky Mountains, you are still obligated to make it seem as smooth to navigate as an interstate across the Great Plains. The second skill: crafting documents so they establish your credibility with readers from the start, especially by showing them promptly how your work will benefit them.
These are not “writing” skills in the law school sense — they are skills for communicating effectively with tough audiences through your writing. If your ability to communicate your thinking is to become as sophisticated as the thinking itself, you must learn to “think like a writer” with the same sophistication with which you think like a lawyer. Otherwise, you risk producing writing that looks just fine to you, but leaves your readers frustrated and unhappy.
What does it mean to “think like a writer”?
When you think like a lawyer, you do more than simply deploy precedents and interpret statutes. You also apply your understanding of the fundamental principles that govern an area of the law, and how those principles flow through all the cases, statutes, or regulations floating around within it. Similarly, thinking like a writer requires understanding the fundamental principles that govern, for example, how to organize a document or structure a sentence so it can be read easily and efficiently, and how to establish your credibility with demanding and skeptical readers. These principles rest on two foundations: what we know about how the brain processes complex information, and what rhetoric teaches us about establishing a connection with our audience. They lead directly to specific, concrete advice at all levels of a document, from its overall organization down to its sentences. They can also transform you into a much more incisive editor of both your own writing and the writing of others — and, if you supervise other lawyers, a more effective coach for their development as legal writers.
In the newly updated Fourth Edition of Thinking Like a Writer: A Lawyer’s Guide to Effective Writing and Editing (PLI Press), authors Stephen Armstrong, Timothy Terrell, and Jarrod Reich demonstrate how even first-rate writers can raise their writing to a new level of effectiveness. Like the earlier editions, this publication provides scores of illuminating before-and-after examples and applies its advice to specific types of legal writing (emails, memos, letters, briefs, and judicial opinions). The new edition has also been updated, however, to reflect the increased impatience and speed-reading habits of readers, and the profession’s increased reliance on email and forms of instant messaging rather than on formal memos or letters.
Practising Law Institute is a nonprofit learning organization dedicated to keeping attorneys and other professionals at the forefront of knowledge and expertise. PLI is chartered by the Regents of the University of the State of New York and was founded in 1933 by Harold P. Seligson. The organization provides the highest quality, accredited, continuing legal and professional education programs in a variety of formats which are delivered by more than 4,000 volunteer faculty including prominent lawyers, judges, investment bankers, accountants, corporate counsel, and U.S. and international government regulators. PLI publishes a comprehensive library of Treatises, Course Handbooks, Answer Books and Journals also available through the PLI PLUS online platform. The essence of PLI’s mission is its commitment to the pro bono community. View PLI’s upcoming live webcasts here.
