Writing On And The Law Review Competition

The 1L exams are over—at last—for students at my school, and the writing competition has begun. I promised a post on writing on to Law Review, so here goes. 

When we got the packets last year we had just walked out of our Property exam and were in various stages of denial and devastation. The packet was about an inch thick, cost $10, and contained within it a slim hope of outstanding success for a lifelong career. I couldn’t bear to look at it. 

So I didn’t look at it for quite a few days. 

Then I finally cracked it open, read a few pages, and put it down again. The next day I took the packet with me to a coffee shop and camped out with a pen and highlighter and started at the beginning. I read through the entire packet and by the time I got to the end I had a good sense of what the issue was. But I was not yet ready to write. 

I reread a lot of the material and sorted it into what was helpful for provoking questions and what was helpful for the actual writing portion, and decided that there was not much overlap between them. Here’s a big tip: one of the more important aspects of legal analysis is figuring out what is not pertinent and disregarding it. It’s a good idea to demonstrate this skill by summarily excluding certain material. There was an entire section of the packet that I simply ignored after my initial reading and sorting, and it didn’t seem to hurt me. 

Finally I started to write. I paid a lot of attention to the directions, reading and rereading them. First I concentrated on getting down good ideas. Reading the directions and looking carefully at the example gave me a pretty good indication that what was important was to think about what angles would be good to explore—even if I didn’t necessarily know what the solution should be. 

Once I had the ideas down, I went to work on editing the piece. I went over it a million times, making sure that each section was the perfect length, that I followed the example as closely as possible, that every word was precise and effective. I honed the language and triple-checked the grammar. I read it aloud to make sure everything flowed. I included a touch of lightness to make it readable, but mostly kept the writing as clean and clear as possible. I didn’t try for fancy. I just went for perfect. Better to have everything precisely right, I thought, than to have flourishes fraught with errors. 

I kept in mind certain basic rules of writing. Vary sentence length and structure. Keep most sentences to 15 or fewer words, but once in a while throw in a longer one to keep the writing from being too choppy. For strength, chose choose Anglo-Saxon words over those of Latin origin. But where one word will do the work of two or ten, use it. Make sure that the point of every paragraph is clear, and make sure each one flows naturally into the next. In other words: pay attention to the mechanics. Most of the work of Law Review is not sitting around thinking deep thoughts; it’s editing for clarity and accuracy and striving for a modicum of grace.

I also proofread my competition more carefully than I do my posts.

Here are a few specific suggestions. Do not start a sentence with “however.” But you may start sentences with “but” or “and” where appropriate. “Since” does not mean “because.” “Impact” is not a verb—use it that way and die. Brush up on the subjunctive. And PAY ATTENTION to your Bluebooking! Just because we now use the Maroonbook does not mean we won’t spot sloppy Bluebooking and dock you for it. 

One other tip: use spell check (although you can never rely on it exclusively). When you do, it will pop up reading statistics for you. There’s a number for readability. The New York Times has an average readability number of around 39, Harvard Law Review of about 32, a Comment I worked on recently had sentences rating 0. You do not want the competition graders reading your entry and saying “Huh?” But do not be ruled by the readability number; in my opinion legal writing is almost inevitably lower scoring. The  grade level, however, can be kept reasonable. 

I did not start writing until fairly late in the competition—certainly not within the first week. My boss was very kind and allowed me a late start, so I didn’t have to try to do it around a work schedule. I put in some very long days on it though, and stayed up very very late on a few of the last nights. When I thought it was ready I printed it out and read it from start to finish, and found numerous errors or places for improvement. I did that several times, and finally was ready to print out all the copies and be done with it—not that I was satisfied, but I didn’t think I could improve it any more. Of course, after I had printed out all the copies I found an error that required me to reprint two pages for every copy and swap them in for the bad pages. It was a tiny error that maybe wouldn’t even have been noticed. On the other hand, maybe fixing that one little thing is what made the difference for me—there’s no way to know. 

The writing competition must be your work and yours alone. I couldn’t have anyone edit it for me, I couldn’t talk about it, I couldn’t do other research. I just had to sit with a small amount of caselaw, an issue, and my brain, and put them together in some way that would be convincingly brilliant. Or at least, less awful than all but 9 other competitors. Again, I  figured it was most important to show how well I could analyze: the writing is important, but beautiful writing will do you  no good unless it is expressing  interesting and careful analysis and demonstrates excellent logic. Think, think, and think again. Be precise. Be logical. Be careful.

That’s my story. Somehow my method worked for me. Maybe it will for you too. Best of luck to all those who are competing. And please don’t drop out—the work of Law Review is onerous, but the rewards are pretty huge. (By the way, if you are competing this year you cannot be in touch with me either in real life or through the blog until the competition is over. I do not exist to you; you do not exist to me. But good luck.)

Comments

[ckm]

Nice job of writing there, lady. The guy I live with thinks you sound like a judge already. By the way, how do you spell the imperative of "to choose"? Check the paragraph that starts, "I kept in mind..."

[Citations]

Ha! And now you see, dear readers, why I am somewhat obsessive about language and grammar!

That'll teach me to post in the wee hours.

[PT-LawMom]

Sounds like a very busy week, but hopefully it will turn out to have been well worth the exercise. Good luck with the competition!

[anonymous 1L]

Thank you very, very much for doing this post; I really appreciate your advice. Sadly, we 1Ls are only halfway done! (Just four days and two exams until we can indulge in the joy that is the writing competition :)