(inaugural post) Realizing Legal Writing

I finally realized it: I love legal writing. It took me some time to get to this point because I never thought of legal writing as something to love. After all, it always seemed like the afterthought on the law school curriculum. In my 1L year it was the course yielding the fewest credits, and, therefore, the lightest weight of all the semester’s classes. No one could rationalize prioritizing it when faced with a Contracts class that would constitute ⅓ of the semester’s weighted GPA. And, perhaps disadvantaged by the taint of first-year legal writing, the upper-level writing requirement was always viewed by my classmates and me as an empty obstacle one must overcome to graduate. _Plus, what is legal writing, anyway?_ Form devoid of any substance, that was our impression. Like most of my classmates, I went to law school for the substance. Specifically, I was there to become a public interest lawyer. Maybe I would have acknowledged that becoming a legal writer was an inevitable byproduct of attaining this goal. But it surely did not occur to me that becoming a legal writer could be a goal in itself.

Had it occurred to me, maybe I would have noticed, and embraced, my fondness for legal writing sooner. All the signs were there. I was not aware of it at the time, but I actually did prioritize legal writing during my first year. And I fulfilled my upper-level writing requirement several times over. I could not get enough. I still can’t. During my clerkship with a United States District Court Judge in New York, it was a nice perk to have a behind-the-bench view of the litigants in action before the Judge, but, for me, the abundant writing was the real highlight. After clerking, I was eager to practice law in the public interest and worked for a New York City direct legal services provider. It was great work and satisfying in many ways. But days went by without any legal writing. And I missed it. And I realized for the first time: I need a job with a fair share of legal writing because, quite simply, I love it.

I was lucky enough be offered my current position as a clerk for a Federal Appellate Judge. For the next eleven months, each day I will primarily read briefs, think about legal issues and write about them, in draft opinions or bench memos. The work places legal writing — my own and others’ — at the forefront of my awareness. I still aspire to be a public interest lawyer, but the most important aspect of what comes after this clerkship is the form rather than the substance: I want to write.

I love legal writing because of the intellectual process of artfully piecing together a puzzle for a reader, revealing with clarity a compelling argument, an inevitable conclusion, or clear terms of a relationship. It is the practice of subtly and accurately manipulating language and deliberately and cogently navigating case law. It requires logical organization, precision, and simplicity. It can never be fully mastered, which means that I can always improve.

I read about legal writing. I think about what makes good legal writing and what makes bad. I even have legal writing pet peevs and guilty pleasures. This blog will be about all that and anything else related to the subject. I hope that it becomes a platform that improves my legal writing, and a resource that informs others’ as well.