If you initially say the incident occurred on a “bridge,” don’t later refer to it as an “overpass.”

And if you initially describe the incident as a “robbery,” don’t later call it a “theft.”

Get the gist?

1️⃣ STEP 1: Fully justify your body text.

▪️ Set the format for all paragraphs so the text ending at the right margin makes a perfectly straight line.

—When you fully justify, you often cut a few lines of text per document.

It’s been like this since I went to law school in the 1990s, and it’s largely the same today.

LRW profs rarely get tenure.
They often have no vote.
And they typically make less than $100,000/year.

That’s a lot less than clinical profs, and only about HALF of doctrinal-prof pay.

“How many of you have gotten a job because of a connection?”

There must have been at least 100 lawyers in the room.

Every single one raised their hand.

👉 Law students: This is the way to get jobs.

🔹 On turning 55:

—“Yikes!”

(We are definitely more than half way through now.🙀😱)

—But also, “Ahhh!”

(At least compared to 25, a birthday on which I cried, as I was 100% single and thought I’d grow old, a spinster, and die.)

Beta-readers.

👉 A beta-reader is like a test case.

—The idea is that you send a very early draft of your book to people who resemble the types of readers you're targeting.

—Then, you get all their feedback; you make the draft better; and you send it to a new set of beta-readers.

This happens a lot to junior lawyers.

When it happens to you:

Please DON’T guess.
Please DON’T wing it.

✅ Please DO find out all needed info info BEFORE starting.

Here are the types of proactive questions I recommend you ask:

Dear Legal Writer:

Put a comma or period INSIDE the quotation marks.

Do this regardless of whether that comma or period appeared in the original, quoted material.

Scope: U.S. Legal Writing*

Here are two examples.

1️⃣ Mistake No. 1:

The items don’t make sense with the words setting up the list.

🔻 Example: “The applicant must submit a filing fee, a copy of the permit, and fill out a form.”

The culprit is easier to detect if you diagram:

I knew it would happen eventually, but wow, it still sucked.

Last evening, as I played the otherwise terrible day back in my mind, the review was the thing that really stuck in my craw.

Then a real friend came through for me.

And I emphasize “real.”

🔹 Old, obsolete way:

-Use complex words non-lawyers won’t know.
-Use no charts, timelines, or photographs.
-Add emphasis with boldface and italics.
-Write in Times New Roman font.
-Use acronyms for party names.
-Use footnotes to save space.
-Maximize use of legalese.

To me, marking edits in red ink is like using ALLCAPS in an email.

Where ALLCAPS signifies shouting, red ink signifies barking.

The result is a bloody butchering of the pages:
—> the draft looks like a crime scene,
—> the junior lawyer feels skewered.

▪️ “I love ‘But’ at the beginning of a sentence, and I never put ‘However’ at the beginning—almost never.”

— Justice Antonin Scalia (Garner, 13 The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing (2010), at 60.)

▪️ “‘However,’ is a ‘ponderous’ way to [start a sentence].”

And wish Chris Schandevel happy birthday today! To celebrate, he’s shared a fabulous gift with you:

It is 74 obest legal-writing tips:

all packed together into one Brief-Writing Ninja Legal Style Guide.

And it’s absolutely free.

1️⃣ Remember #Dear1L?

Yeah, that was the hashtag I started and grew to 2,810 followers.

—I started #DearLegalWriter, too. That one I grew to 1,722 followers.

Then LinkedIn said ❌ to hashtags.*

👉 Lesson: Be careful building on rented land.