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?