Welcome to my LinkedIn archive.
Categories: Dear 1L, Dear 2L, Legal Writing
By Year: 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021
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Search by word to find what I’ve written on the topic of your choosing!
Dear Legal Writer: Please stop referring to the “company” as “they”
Please stop referring to the “company” as “they.”
The “company” is an “it,” not a “they.”
If you have doubts, below is a short explanation, along with a query for international peeps:
**
In U.S. English:
Personal Branding
By the time I graduated law school, I had had enough of men.
I moved states, bought my own apartment in NYC, and set out to start my life as an independent “career woman.”
(That is what we called women who didn’t marry and just had careers back then, in 1996.)
Avoid Expletives in Legal Writing
Dear Legal Writer: If I told you to minimize “expletives” in your legal writing to help you cut words, you might retort, “I would never use expletives in legal writing.”
Alas, but you do.
Here’s what I mean:
🔹 Definition:
Dear Legal Writer: Punctuation with Quotations
Dear Legal Writer: Put a period or comma INSIDE the ending quotation marks, regardless of whether the period or comma appeared in the original, quoted material.
Scope: U.S. Legal Writing*
Here are two examples.
1️⃣ NO COMMA IN ORIGINAL
Dear 1L: Learn When to Capitalize “Court”
Dear 1L, Too many of you are capitalizing the word “court” when you shouldn't, and not capitalizing it when you should.
Learn the rules governing court capitalization now, and you’ll never need to think about the topic again.
RULES
Dear Legal Writer: Be careful of the word “find” in legal writing
Dear Legal Writer: Be careful with the word “find.”
In fact, if you’re writing a motion for summary judgment or an appellate brief, don’t use “find” at all.
🔹 An appellate court doesn’t “find” anything. It renders conclusions of law, not fact.
For February Bar Exam Takers
This post is for those taking the February bar exam.
I had to take 3 different state bars over 15 years.
Every time, it was sheer hell. Mixed with panic.
The volume of material was prohibitive.
Unprecedented. Abnormal even.
And oh—so—painfully boring.
Dear 1L: This is My “Office”
These days, it’s easy to get blue.
Another winter Sunday,
In the library, you will be.
School’s become a sole social outlet.
Your desk or bed-top where you dine.
It’s all work, no play.
Dear 1L, Who are you when you leave BigLaw AND stop the active practice of law?
I received this letter from the Pennsylvania Bar. It hit me kind of hard.
It’s not a bad thing or anything like that. But it’s a clear change in official status.
It is bittersweet, too, as I loved practicing law, and it will always be a big part of me.
Dear 1L: Advice on Job Interview Questions to Ask in Interviews for Your 1LSummer Internship
Dear 1L,
The best interview advice I ever received was to ask the type of questions that my interviewer would enjoy answering.
Why does this work?
Dear 1L: Summary Judgment Primer & Sample Phrases
Many of you are writing summary judgment briefs under Rule 56 this spring. Yet in your fall Civ Pro class, you’re lucky if Rule 56 even came up. Worse still, you’ve never written a summary judgment brief before.
I thought a little primer on procedure, with some phrases you might use, would help.
Dear Legal Writer: “Making Your Case” by Bryan Garner and Justice AntoninScalia
Dear Legal Writer, If you want a quick read that’s chock-full of info & advice on written & oral advocacy, I recommend:
“Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges,” by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the well-known, legal-writing scholar, Bryan A. Garner (“MYC”).
Dear 1L: Networking to Build a Book of Business in BigLaw
If you work your way up through the BigLaw associate ranks like I did, eventually you face a time of reckoning. The only question becomes:
⁉️ Do you have a book of business? ⁉️
You may even awake one cold day to the stark reality that even though you’ve done a superlative job as an associate, there is only up, out, or, in select cases, on indefinite “hold.”
Dear 1L: How to Find the Best Briefs to Use as Models for the 1L Brief
Dear 1L, When you have to write -the kind of brief you’ve never written before, on a topic you’ve never written about before, in a court you’ve never practiced in before, please do not start without several good models.
Pull the briefs from the most applicable court cases you’ve found from your research.
Read models from legal writers who are better at writing and have more experience than you.
Dear 1L, How to Turn Around Spring Grades
Dear 1L, I wish I had a magic potion. You all could take it and convert Bs, Cs & Ds into As this spring. But alas, I have only my words. So please listen:
If you want your spring grades to differ from those of the fall, YOU must do something different. It’s not enough to study “longer” or “harder” this semester. You need to study “smarter.”