So you have your first brief-writing assignment, or maybe you are canvassing the Internet for some insight on legal writing after a court ordered you to show cause why you should not be sanctioned for bad legal writing. In either case, there is hope. The key to successful legal writing is to remember who your readers are. While you may think of the senior lawyers or the firm’s client as your audience, you’re truly writing for the court. In many cases, you are writing to both a seasoned judge and to the judge’s law clerks, who must contend with an overflowing docket and adjudicate a vast array of diverse legal issues. One day, the judge and her clerks are working on your case, and the next day they must resolve complex issues ranging from admiralty law and trademark infringement to toxic tort claims and labor and employment disputes. Mix in a little criminal law and it is easy to see the importance of concise, persuasive writing. The judge and her clerks could view your brief as helpful and persuasive if it’s done right, but also could lose patience (and along with it, confidence in your credibility) if it’s meandering, confusing or demonstrates a lack of familiarity with basic rules.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had this to say about the importance of good brief writing, in a LawProse interview with Bryan Garner: “We depend heavily on the lawyers. Our chances of getting a case right improve to the extent the lawyers do a better job, and when you see something like bad writing, the first thing you think is, well, if he didn’t have enough time to spend writing it well, how much time did he spend researching it? How much time did he spend thinking out the ramifications of his position? You don’t have a lot of confidence in the substance if the writing is bad.”
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