The Write Stuff

Originally published in the 2022 Best Lawyers Litigation publication on September 8, 2022. 

Whether you start a legal writing project by staring at the blinking cursor on a blank screen or tapping your pen on an empty legal pad, you’ve surely experienced the universal challenge of getting the thought process, so clear in your mind, into a document that will win the day thanks to its logical organization, clarity and persuasiveness.

What’s true across the board is that good writing skills are the key to effective communication that leads to a successful outcome—and that bad writing can lose an otherwise good case. Let’s look at some important tools of the trade that will help you meet the challenge and craft a winning document.

Develop a strong and useful introduction. Studies show that most people form a first impression of others within a mere seven seconds. Some experiments have gone further to suggest that people can make accurate judgments of others within a tenth of a second. Perhaps more significantly, these quick first impressions are often long-lasting, and it may be extremely difficult—perhaps sometimes impossible—to overcome a less-than-stellar initial performance.

The importance of making a good first impression applies equally to all the legal writing you do. You have control over the impression you make, with an eye to establishing instant credibility and rapport with the court. Do not miss this key opportunity by ignoring the importance of a strong and useful introduction to your document. The opening paragraphs are your first chance to connect with your reader; use them wisely to develop a theme and set the stage for what’s to come. Although we all enjoy a good mystery novel, a court pleading should not be a whodunit—indeed, leaving your most important points until the end and keeping the court guessing as to the outcome is one of the easiest ways to make a poor first impression.

Instead, use the first few paragraphs to clearly roadmap your case, succinctly explaining what is at issue, what you want the court to do and why the law supports you. This is the place to pique the reader’s interest in learning more about the matter while also instilling confidence that you have mastered both the relevant facts and the controlling law to support the requested outcome. Starting out on the wrong foot may leave a negative impression that’s hard to shake.

Keep your arguments organized. Your goal is to make it as easy as possible for the reader to understand your arguments and to show that you have ample support for the outcome you seek. A key component of this plan is to organize your arguments logically.

Think back to your legal writing classes in law school, when you first heard about a writing structure called “CRAC”: conclusion, rule, application, conclusion. This format is the bedrock of persuasive writing, and you should follow it to ensure an orderly sequence of points: laying out the issue to be addressed and the conclusion you want the court to reach; a statement of the legal rules relevant to the issue; an analysis of the pertinent facts based on those rules; and a summary of the overall conclusion. This approach helps your reader easily understand the pertinent issues and how they should be resolved.

When a document addresses several issues at greater length, developing an outline is particularly helpful to keep your thoughts moving forward in a structured way. Also, using headings and subheadings orients the reader throughout the argument, continuing the roadmapping that began in the introduction. All these pieces work together to guide your reader effortlessly from point A to point B and, ultimately, to the result you’re going for.

Be clear and concise. Often, when we think of legal documents, archaic words such as whereof, hereunto and hereinbefore come to mind. Banish such dusty verbiage forever from your writing and avoid any kind of legalese: Such stuffy and stilted writing is a surefire way to lose the reader’s attention from the get-go.