To Practicing Attorneys: Stop Writing Law Review Articles, Steer Clear of Pedantry and Mystification

by

Is the Law Review dead? Many think it is. Or, that it is dying. According to Walter Olson of The Atlantic on the subject of law reviews: “They’re outdated, impractical, and slowly dying. It’s time to put them to rest.”

Let’s just be honest – we just don’t have the attention span for law review articles anymore. The trend for legal scholarship is shorter, timelier discussions that people actually read like blogs and other short-form online publications. According to Olson, “[a]s online law writing has taken off, readers are rewarding qualities like clarity, concision, relevance, and wit, and steering clear of pedantry and mystification.” Here, here, Mr. Olson.

[Read more…]

Forget Creativity And Exploration, Students Just Want The Right Answer

by

Undergraduate as well as college professors know that students don’t want to explore anymore. They are not inspired by opportunities to be creative and to use their own opinions and analysis to reach their own conclusions. They just want to know the right answer.

In So Many Hands To Hold In The Classroom, Lynda C. Lambert wrote

So many of them are so unused to thinking on their own that they cannot formulate an opinion without being told what opinion they are supposed to have.

Untrained to be independent and critical thinkers, students are demanding more than examples and explanations – they want teachers to provide the answers to the questions posed.

These college students come to law school with similar expectations and demands for the right answer and are disappointed and disoriented when they quickly realize that there aren’t any right answers, especially in law school.

 

Brief or Comic Book? Which Would You Prefer To Read

by

When a judge told Bob Kohn that he had to whittle his 55-page amicus brief down to 5 pages, Bob Kohn did not despair. He complied in comic book form.

With the help of his daughter’s friends, Kohn was able to not only reduce his 55-page amicus brief down to the required 5 pages, but also to comply with the court’s formatting rules (mostly). I have previously posted about the increasing usage and utility of images in briefs. Maybe comic book or graphic art briefs are the next logical step. Pictures are worth a thousand words, right?

 

 

#1 Secret of Great Writers: Rewriting

by

Good writing means rewriting and lots of it. Good writing requires many “writing” steps: outlining, drafting, revising, rewriting, editing, proofreading. Unfortunately, many harried legal practitioners simply do not have time for multiple steps in the writing process beyond drafting and proofing. For some, “writing” is simply drafting and submitting.

Great writers aren’t great because they write the right words the first time. Good writers don’t rewrite or revise because they made mistakes in the first version. These writers rewrite because it is the rewriting process itself that transforms good (or less than good) writing into excellent writing. Rewriting is not a punishment or a reprimand, it is an essential part of the entire writing process.

Great writers are great because they rewrite, sometimes again and again until the words are right.

[Read more…]

Hate Editing? WordRake May Be For You

by

A new editing application called WordRake was released recently as an add-in for Microsoft Word. WordRake is an editing software for lawyers, designed to find and remove unnecessary words so that the written product is as concise and clear as it can be. WordRake promises to help busy lawyers to edit quickly, communicate clearly, write concisely, and eliminate useless words. The application was designed by Gary Kinder, lawyer, New York Times bestselling author, and ABA writing expert.

I have not tried WordRake, but as many of the posts on this blog prove, I am always on the lookout for smart ways to edit and revise. For all of my fellow lawyers (i.e., professional writers) out there who love or tolerate writing but hate editing. WordRake may be just what you have been waiting for.

Will WordRake write the brief for you? No. Will it make your mediocre brief much better? Probably.