Dear Legal Writer, You can speed up your briefwriting writing process if you write “swiftly.”

(It makes a big difference.)

TBH, for years, I felt like a fraud from Bryan Garner’s advice to “write swiftly” (until I finally understood what he meant).

At the time, nothing about my brief-writing was “swift.”

Agonizing, yes.
Painstaking, true.
Laborious, always.

And I wasn’t at all helped by Garner’s corollary,

“Don’t start writing until you know what you want to say.”

That sounded impossible.

Writing is thinking for me.

How could I know before I write?

A “fraud,” I was, indeed.

But then I finally realized something. ⤵️

Garner doesn’t mean “rush your drafting.”

He means: finish your thinking first.

👉 Imagine you must explain your brief orally to a judge.

You know the law cold.
You know the cases cold.
You see how they fit together.
But you get no paper, no written crutch.
It’s just you and the judge.

Could you stand up and explain your points cleanly?

If yes, you can write swiftly.

The argument already exists.

You’re just writing what you already know.

👉 I feel this most when I write comments on LinkedIn.
Sometimes my fingers can’t keep up.
The reasoning is already formed.
I’m just typing what I already know.

That’s “writing swiftly”:

-Do the heavy thinking in advance.

-Then just write what you already know.

**

“Write swiftly” is not about speed.

It’s about thinking fully BEFORE you start writing.

It’s about writing what you already know.

Do you write your briefs “swiftly”?

💌 Amanda

#DearLegalWriter