Dear Legal Writer, “If you can give good directions, you can probably write a good brief.”
Dear Legal Writer, “If you can give good directions, you can probably write a good brief.”
—That’s one of Bryan Garner’s famous quotes, and I want you to think about what it means.
I also want you to go back to the pre-iPhone and pre-Mapquest days when Garner said it:
▪️ We used to have to give people very detailed driving directions to get to us.
▪️ There was no iphone calling out reminders for them mid-drive.
▪️ We used big, paper maps that were always impossible to manage in the car.
Could you give someone driving directions to get to YOUR home today w/o using Internet help?
Try it.
👉 It works because when you write someone directions to get to your house, you actually WANT them to get to your house.
—> So you write clearly.
You also don’t want to muck up the directions with big words or complex sentence structures, or they might get lost.
—> So you write simply.
Finally, you don’t want them to get lost in a long-winded reading project while they are trying to navigate the road.
—> So you write concisely.
⬇️
Now go back to that brief and use those driving-directions skills!
👉 Your job is to give the court clear directions on how to get from Point A to Point B.
Point A = knowing little to nothing about your case or the law that governs it.
Point B = not only understanding your case and the governing law, but also AGREEING with you on how the law applies to your case to get to a desired outcome for your client.
Use that same mindset every time you write, because the goal of a legal writer is to COMMUNICATE, not to impress.
(And I promise that your reader will be much more impressed by getting to your house on time than they’ll be over any fancy verbiage or syntax in your writing style.)
💌 Amanda
#DearLegalWriter
P.S. My favorite thing to do right now is to start new pen-pal relationships with lawyers and students who comment on my post.
I adore meeting new people and finding out more about my followers, so please don’t be shy! Why not drop me a note to introduce yourself and say hi?
P.P.S. Anyone else remember those maps and how impossible they were to refold?