Legal Writing

Never in the history of academics have students had to do so much work for two credits. Legal Writing is hard. One would think that just from reading case after case after case there would be some learning by osmosis. Nope. Let me put it to you this way. I’ve been done with my first year of Law School now for the better part of the summer and I am just beginning to understand legal writing. Here’s my advice…

Don’t think of it was writing. I repeat, if you think of legal writing as writing you will fail. Writing is about telling a story; setting scene, perhaps character development, rising action and resolution. Writing can be enjoyable, sometimes people even find it cathartic. Legal Writing is not like that at all. Your best bet is to think of Legal Writing as math. Remember geometry proofs? Proving triangle A is similar to triangle B, or proving congruence between two parallelograms? If you don’t remember, refresh yourself.

Legal writing is definitely more like a logic proof than a short story. Throw away all of your fancy writing books and find your Integrated Math II textbook from tenth grade and get crackin.