Dear 1l, 1L legal writing was the one course I did NOT fear. Writing was something I’d been doing for years, and I was getting As. Surely, “legal” writing couldn’t be that different, or hard.

Dear 1L,

I was wrong.

You may be a good writer.
You may be an excellent writer.
You may even be a published author.
But you are not a good legal writer yet.
You couldn’t possibly be.
I was terrible, too.
That’s normal.

You’ll be asked to write in ways you don’t like. In ways you’d thought you’d outgrown. In ways you hate, even.

I fought the 1L writing rules and lost.

Don’t do what I did.
In the end, you’ll succumb.
We all must.

Fondly,

💌 Amanda