When we start out as lawyers, we’re so afraid of being caught unprepared that we try to memorize every fact, every detail, and every statute. It seems like the smart thing to do. After all, doesn’t every job posting require “attention to detail”? The problem is that details become our security blanket. When a partner, a judge, or a potential client asks a question, we regurgitate the facts we memorized the night before and rattle off code sections—surely, our knowledge will impress our audience.

Addressing your reader and potential client’s problems entails lending a listening ear and showing genuine empathy. Every problem you encounter has a human and emotional aspect that requires a proper and sensitive approach. Whether it’s a contract dispute over the interpretation of a cessation of business clause, an excused performance under a force majeure clause, or responsibility for undelivered goods, each case is a legal question to you—but never forget that it’s an emotional issue for your client. These situations call for empathy. And that means you must connect with your clients on a more personal level to address their pain points.

What difference can one minute make? It may surprise you to learn that one minute can be the difference between successfully completing two tasks—or fumbling them both. Let’s explore how this theory can help us with the documents we create at work.

Though we may be hired to interpret and apply the law, our clients rely on our writing skills to accurately capture their intent. It’s irresponsible to discount punctuation rules as pedantic and useless. Lawyers must get three comma rules right:

Even when we’re working in the same building, we rarely interact the people we work with in person and in real time. Now that we’re working from home, we’re relying on email more and more. Aside from a few Zoom conversations, your email writing style and etiquette may be the only thing a senior partner knows of you.

Writing short, simple, clear prose isn’t merely good practice. Science tells us it ensures that overwhelmed readers understand your message quickly and easily.

In middle school, we memorized vocabulary lists to learn new words and build our reading comprehension. In high school, we memorized vocabulary lists to prepare for college entrance exams. In law school, we memorized legal terms for cold calls and final exams. Success at these tedious memorization exercises led to academic accolades and bragging rights. After years of indoctrination, it’s no surprise that we would believe that a large vocabulary would impress readers. But if you believe that, you’d be wrong.

Though we continue to write legal memos as though they will be read on printed paper, that expectation no longer holds. Even before the recent shift to working remotely, email had become the primary method of business communication and email memos the vehicle to share legal analysis. Now the screen of the electronic device on which we read provides our structure, context, and limitations—we no longer rely on the printed page for this information.

When you run a business, demonstrating credibility and persuading others are your primary goals. You can’t do that without great business writing. But strong writing is easier discussed than accomplished. And it takes more than Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. From universal writing rules to advice that will change your process and your results, here are eight books (in no particular order) to make your writing better.

Your legal writing reference library should include more than the five standards: the Bluebook, the Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style, A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting, Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage, and Black’s Law Dictionary. There’s more to writing than mechanics and accurate definitions, and these books prove it. From universal rules and styles to advice that will change your process and your results, here are seven books (in no particular order) to make your writing better.