1️⃣ Brainstorm and outline your answer before you start to write.

If I had allotted 1 hr. for a question, I’d typically spend at least 15 minutes thinking about, planning, and organizing my essay before starting to write.

The more disciplined you can be about this pre-writing work, the more organized and thorough your final product will be.

✏️ Rewriting the same sentences over and over again.

If that happens to you, try this:

🔸 Revisit your outline.

—If you didn’t make an outline at the start, definitely make one now.

✏️ Legal writing always takes so much longer than you think it should.

In an effort to help, I share 4 things for the memo that many 1Ls aren’t clear about.

1: Check your capitalization of “court.”

🔷 1: Convert sentences to active voice.

Eg
“The boy hit the ball.”

—is shorter than—

❌ “The ball was hit by the boy.”

🔷 1: Using “utilize” for “use” won’t make you sound smart.

More likely, you’ll come off as “trying to sound smart” — perhaps smarter than you really are. That’s a bad look.

⭐️ Unless you are positive that in your legal context, your Reader prefers “utilize” to mean “use” — does anyone? — just write “use.”

✏️ Dear 1L Writer,

Your professor is prone to boredom and distraction.

That’s not some big revelation.

All Readers are, and it’s especially true for Readers of legal writing.

✏️ And so, in that spirit, here are are the top 10 writing mistakes I see 1Ls make:

1: Too much passive voice. (Prefer the active.)

2: Needlessly long sentences. (Keep ‘em short.)

3: Needlessly complex sentence structure. (Keep ‘em simple.)

“You should never end a sentence with a preposition.” Were you taught this rule, too? Well, it’s crap.

Here’s evidence, with some important caveats to think about & references for further reading.

🔷 Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern Legal English Usage, 4th ed. (2016), pp. 723-24:

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John Espirian is my LinkedIn guru and overall favorite source of advice for marketing and business development (BD). John is humble, kind, and approachable—do follow him, but only connect if you’re willing to do some homework first.

💫 Dear 1L - Spotlight

Today I introduce Michael Aronson, a 2L who started as a small-town, ice-hockey goalie with big-time plans: He’d someday become the star starting goalie for the Florida Panthers.

During long training hours with the team’s goalie coach, Michael ultimately seized a spot on a Junior-level team and was one big step closer to realizing his hockey-star dream.

✏️ Dear 1L Writer,

We need to have a little chat about “which” and “that.”

You are all using “which” WAY too much.

In today’s holiday (sort of) spirit and for Halloween, I dispense with formal grammar terms and all of the examples you can easily find online.

Dear 1L Writer,

When you write your very first legal memo, please don’t get discouraged by how long it takes you. There is nothing “wrong” with you. Legal writing just takes a very long time.

Everyone is in the same boat, too. It’s not just you.

Dear 1L Writer,

I’m seeing students use “proscribe” and “prescribe” interchangeably. Wanted to make sure you were clear that the words are near opposites.

🔷 To “prescribe” means to direct or instruct a rule (or course of conduct) to be followed (e.g., a doctor prescribing medicine or exercise). But “prescribe” comes up in law, too.

Dear Legal Writer,

When you write a legal research memo or brief, you spend a lot of time writing about how your case compares to other cases. A dilemma you face is how to refer to your case.

You have many options, including:

➖ In this case

If you write “Thus,” “Therefore,” or similar words to start a sentence, elevate your style by moving such words to the middle of the sentence.

Here’s an example of each:

1️⃣

▪️ ORIGINAL: “Thus, we decided to delay the deposition.”