Not everyone can teach. Senior partners may be expert legal writers, but it doesn't mean they all have the time, patience, or skill to help associates learn their craft. That's where legal writing coaches and trainers like Lisa Pearl come in. She talks about her writing and teaching process below.

Tech tools, especially AI tools are a hot topic in the legal writing field, and a lot of legal writers are anxious about what they mean for the future. Not associate attorney and legal writer Neven Selimovic: he believes in earning and using every tool he can to bring clients the best possible outcome. He shares his strategies and philosophy in this interview. 

What makes good legal writing? Clarity and simplicity! Attorney and legal writing coach Chinua Asuzu practices what he teaches. Even in this legal writing interview, he uses visual clues like lists and bullet points to make his meaning easy to read and understand. He shares his best practices with us.

Does your firm have a dedicated legal writing team? If you have the resources, it might be worth considering! Brendan M. Kenny from Hellmuth & Johnson works as a litigator himself, and as a legal writer for other members of the practice. This gives him and his colleagues in the legal writing group the opportunity to explore and perfect the use of new technologies to support their writing. He shared his experience with us in this expert interview:

Not everyone feels confident in their writing, or has time to tackle every brief themself. Some attorneys turn to AI sources to help in those moments, but with more firms making rules about whether and how AI can be used in practice, that’s not always an option. That’s where legal ghostwriters like Matt Sullivan come in. He shared some of his professional experience with us.

Legal writing is at a crossroads. When ChatGPT passed the bar exam, it became impossible to ignore the possibilities that generative AI holds for legal writers. Professor Kirsten K. Davis spent her 2023 sabbatical exploring AI technology, and now teaches law students how to use it effectively in their writing practice. She shared some of her insights in her legal writing interview:

Scholarly writing has the reputation of being dense, esoteric, and hard to understand, especially if you’re not a specialist. This may be an unfair characterization, but like many clichés, there’s an element of truth here. Specialized language and outdated writing “rules” contribute to making academic prose more convoluted than it needs to be. The rise of plain language and accessibility has offered new goals for simplifying such dense writing without sacrificing meaning.

When you’re in the middle of research for your senior thesis, you know your topic so well that figuring out where to start when discussing it feels impossible. You’ve spent months or years exploring a topic to the point you can write and talk about it for hours. But a thesis that reads like an over-eager, disjointed monologue does not interest a reader or help her understand (and love) your topic. Letting the ideas tumble out of your head and onto paper without culling and organizing information will create more work for you—something no one wants, especially with tight deadlines.

Applying for college, fellowships, and graduate school is stressful; it can be daunting to select potential schools, take standardized tests, and secure letters of recommendation. The choices you make now will determine your future.

Your thesis is the cornerstone of your degree. A thesis demonstrates a commitment to your field of study; you want to contribute to your areas of interest, not just learn about them. It encapsulates the years of work you’ve put into your degree. But it’s also one of the main sources of stress for your final year of your program.