Bench & Bar May/June 2025

EFFECTIVE LEGAL WRITING

LEARNING AFTER LAW SCHOOL: HOW TO BE A BETTER WRITER BY ALEXANDRA J. SIPES

L egal writing is arguably the most important part of the legal profession, no matter what aspect of law you work in. Unfortunately, most law schools do not have the capacity to teach enough writ ing classes to students to ensure a mastery of legal writing. 1 Instead, we are focused on teaching the fundamental skills that students will use for the rest of their career. Just like any class, our goal is not to teach everything that a lawyer could possibly know; learning to be a lawyer is a life-long process. 2 This means it is your responsi bility to continue learning and improving as a writer throughout your career. This is particularly important in the early and impressionable years for a new associate. Whether you are a new attorney or a more senior attorney, I am sure you can remember a time when you completed an assignment without any feedback, only for that work product to come up during your annual evaluation months later. Far too often, attorneys are so focused on the final product that they don’t take time out of their busy schedules to teach during the writing process. Instead, you’ll work on a draft of a pleading and then find that a partner has

revised and filed that pleading without any indication to you of what was changed or what was preferred. When that happens, it can make you feel like you don’t know what is expected of you or how to get better. Continuing to practice in that manner is not only inefficient, it is not enjoyable. As is true in law school, the best way to learn and improve is to practice and receive specific feedback on your work product. Therefore, supervising attorneys have to pick up the torch and help teach their newer attorneys, and newer attorneys have to seek out ways to keep learning. TIPS FOR SUPERVISING ATTORNEYS The most difficult (and time consuming) part of teaching legal writing is providing feedback on drafts written by students. If we were simply to give a student a grade on an assignment, they wouldn’t know what spe cifically should be different the next time. Conversely, if we just revise a draft appellate brief, then the student doesn’t have anything for them to revise before submitting their final brief. The goal of legal writing class is to teach students to see these gaps in their writing on their own; we are trying to retrain their brains to approach the next

writing assignment differently than any thing they have done in the past. The same is true in practice; you should be trying to help your newer associates grow so they can practice at your level without help. When I was a fourth-year associate, I had the opportunity to begin teaching legal writing at my alma mater. The best part of that experience was that my writing got better almost immediately. Imagine having the chance to essentially take your first-year legal writing course again with the benefit of completing law school, clerking, and then practicing for years. While not everyone can use this method to improve their writ ing, you can become a teacher in your own right. It is much easier to do something well than it is to explain how to do something well. Spending the time to critique newer attorneys will ultimately make you a better writer. While law firms are beginning to employ writing specialists and consultants to do this sort of work, 3 not enough are and instead the work is left to you as the attorneys. In the most ideal world, you would act as a teacher to a newer attorney. You would review the original draft by the attorney and

44 may/june 2025