Law firm partners regularly bemoan associates’ declining writing skills—but could partners themselves be to blame?

Law firm partners regularly bemoan associates’ declining writing skills—but could partners themselves be to blame?

By prioritizing efficiency over mentorship, have we created a culture where editing is mechanical and learning is minimal?

I submit: Yes.

🔹 In the past, legal writing growth demanded active engagement:

—We had to input every correction from handwritten margins or long voicemails. This forced us to ask “why?”

—We also had to understand the edits before we could implement them, allowing us to spot patterns and record mental notes of our recurring mistakes.

—Having to type in each edit individually created muscle memory and cemented our knowledge for future drafts.

🔹 Fast-forward to today: the process may be faster, but the cost is real.

When partners return a draft saturated with “track changes,” here’s what actually happens:

—Associates become overwhelmed and disillusioned by the volume of changes. Pressed for time, they “accept all changes” with no real reflection, reasoning, or learning.

—The revision process becomes passive, with associates processing edits, but not internalizing them.

—The “one-click fix” eliminates the crucial cognitive work and take-ownership mindset associated with inputting each revision.

🔽

The result is that our junior legal writers plateau, rather than grow, and partners end up re-editing the same issues, draft over draft.

—> That leads to frustration and lost efficiency all around.

If we really want to develop associates into better writers, we need to return to the slow, sometimes painful work of teaching through manual revisions and sentence-by-sentence reviews with associates.

The next generation of legal writers deserve better than “click to accept.”

We know the best way to teach developing legal writers.

Let’s start prioritizing that over the quick-fix-redline tact.

It just might save time in the long term, too.

💌 Amanda

#DearLegalWriter

📬 What’s your take on this issue?