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.)
Recent Comments