A: Transition from your legal rule/explanation section to your discussion of court decisions:

-Under these legal standards,
-Applying these rules,
-When considering these factors,

Dear Legal Writer, I was reviewing a few 1L fall memos this week, and I came across a problem that I also see regularly in litigators’ briefs:

▪️ The response to ABC Corp.'s ("ABC") motion is due on __.

I’ve been scared to talk about my book on LinkedIn:

—What if it isn’t good?
—What if it isn’t successful?
—What if it is really nothing at all?

I’ve always been a downplayer.

—I don’t like to create expectations.

I used to dread it. I used to play out conversations in my mind over and over again. I’d try
—to script my message with just the right words
—to encourage + inspire without putting down,
—to get my explanations clear so they’d learn.

When you find a case with facts and issues similar to those in your spring LRW assignment:

Pull the underlying briefs from the real-life lawyers from the cases.

These lawyers were discussing the EXACT SAME issues you have to write about in your brief.

Today’s message is inspired by a (Nick Bullard) post from last week and a new book called Elegant Legal Writing out tomorrow by (Ryan McCarl).

Nick’s post said: “Friends don’t let friends use TNR in legal briefs.”

I learned this rule the hard way. I hope to save you a similar day.

My mistake actually got a BigLaw partner to aim an assault rifle at me!

(Ok, it was an imaginary one, but I was just a first-year associate, and the experience had a big
effect on me.)

I confess, I’m a bit of a Latin geek, but most people aren’t, and i.e. & e.g. routinely cause mixups. In fact, it’s one of the top 5 mistakes Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogarty) says she sees when editing technical documents. (GrammarGirl .com).

Both abbreviations are really common in legal writing, too.

Dear 1L, Justice Elena Kagan apparently didn’t rush to “write home about” her 1L fall grades, either. She only received two, according to reports, and they came as a shock:

a B in Crim;
a B- in Torts.

What’s your first move?

Try my P-E-N approach. It kills the culprits behind 3 biggies behind empty words:

—Did YOUR middle-school teacher try to sell you that “rule,” too?

And did she also teach you, “It’s wrong grammatically” to use a preposition that way?

Well, she sold you 2 heaps of crap.

Dear Legal Writer, A recent remark by a BigLaw partner stopped me dead in my tracks.

On a post about legal writing (not mine), he commented,

See if you know which of these 3 sentences is correct:

A: The cake comprised 6 ingredients.
B: The cake was comprised by 6 ingredients.
C: The cake was comprised of 6 ingredients.

Here’s the “how-to”:

For any writing project, cut your process into 4 stages. It helps to think of the stages building a house:

Dear Legal Writer, I got 2 kinds of contradictory, negative feedback when I was new at different firms. Both turned on the meaning of “draft”:

1️⃣

“Why on earth would you spend time at $500+/hr filling in citations when a paralegal could have done that for $100/hr?