Welcome to my LinkedIn archive.
Categories: Dear 1L, Dear 2L, Legal Writing
By Year: 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021
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Dear Legal Writer, Don’t write “Despite the fact that.” It is the most debilitating clause in legal writing.
Yet I see people use it regularly.
I now want you to put it in the trash. 🗑️
Instead, try “Even though.”
It is shorter and so much smoother.
Examples—
“It’s hard to take a brief seriously when it is MOOing at you.”
—Chris Schandevel
(describing a brief in which “MOO” was used to define an agreement (“Memorandum of ?”))
Dear Legal Writer:
📌 CUT “the weird acronyms and initialisms.” (Make sure to read the comments below the post, too!)
As a solopreneur, I am still figuring out what I “do.”
That is both good and bad.
Good is that:
—No one criticizes me.
—No one dictates my schedule.
—No one tells me what work to do.
Bad is that:
—I criticize myself more than any boss would.
—I do better when I have a schedule.
—What work should I do???
Dear 1L, A legal brief should be evergreen.
“Evergreen” is a term you might recognize from the plant world:
—it refers to trees that remain green through winter.
But “evergreen” writing means writing that surpasses its immediate purpose and audience, keeping its usefulness over time.
Dear 1L, I can't forget the job interview I totally bombed.
Lesson for you in your law-firm interviews: Beware of the associate lunch.
Growing up, I had learned to downplay my accomplishments.
To be humble.
To be liked.
The lesson was “taught” to me the hard way
— by those kids in the “cool” cliques.
If you want to get better at legal writing, you need to shift how you THINK about legal writing.
Here are 5 key shifts to make:
1️⃣ I am writing to impress —> I am writing to communicate
2️⃣ I need to be trained —> I will train myself
3️⃣ I aim to write acceptably —> I aim to write exceptionally
Dear legal writer, Feeling lost in a sentence/nothing is sounding right? Just move these 2 words:
Subject + Verb
🔹 1: Identify the subject in your sentence.
The SUBJECT tells who or what the sentence is about (e.g., “The boy” in “The boy kicked the ball.”).
🔹 2: Now, find your verb.
Dear Legal Writer, It’s hard to promote something when you’ve never done it before and don’t know how it will go, but here’s my stab:
I am thinking of hosting a small “legal writing lab” in February.
The idea is to get 4-6 lawyers together once a week.
—I will teach content from my new legal writing course.
Dear Legal Writer, Hello to you, and DO-SI-DO. Today you become a 3-dash pro:
the hyphen (-),
the en-dash (–),
the em-dash (—), (that’s 3!)
Check out below, and an expert you’ll be:
🔺 HYPHEN (-)
We’ll start with the hyphen,
and you can call it a “dash.”
It links multi‑word adjectives,
as in this little miss-match:
Dear 1L, Expel “regard” from your legal writing.
And while you’re at it, cut “regard” from your vocabulary altogether:
👎 “Regarding”
👎👎 “In regard to”
👎👎👎 “As regards”
All of these sound like nails on a chalkboard in legal writing.
They bloat your sentences and make them sound clunky and awkward
Dear Legal Writer: Stop writing “the court found”!
“Find” and “hold” mean very different things.
▪️ “Find” refers to determining facts—what actually happened. This is the job of a fact-finder (a jury, or sometimes a judge in a bench trial or preliminary hearing).
▪️ “Hold” refers to a legal conclusion—a court’s determination of what the law means or what the law requires, given the facts.
Dear 1L, “To be sure” is a genteel expression that lawyers use a lot. Perhaps you’ve noticed.
Well, here’s why we use it and how you can do so effectively in your spring brief:
🔷 “To be sure” signals, “I will now acknowledge the point that most hurts me, in hopes of defusing it on my own terms.”
Dear Legal Writer, If I had a dollar for every time someone on The Bachelor used “myself” incorrectly . .
— “The date was amazing for Brad and myself.”
— “Sarah and myself have a real connection.”
— “This journey has really helped myself grow.”
❌ NO! NO! NO!
(Somewhere, a grammar teacher is sobbing into a rose.)
In 2020, I was a washed-out, unemployed lawyer with zero presence (anywhere).
I hadn’t worked a “real job” in 5 years;
I’d let my lawyering skills lapse;
I’d let my people skills lapse;
I’d let my self-worth lapse;
I’d become a nobody.
But the worst part was having no community.
Dear Legal Writer: Never put a comma before beginning parentheses.
It’s unnecessary, and it’s considered redundant.
WRONG: The teacher said “hi” to only one student, (whose name was Charlie).
WRONG: The plaintiff, (who had a strong case), looked confident at the hearing.