Time pressure in legal writing
In a previous post, I wrote:
The time pressure of law practice doesn't allow enough revising and editing to produce great writing.
Bryan Garner has said: "The modern practice of law does not tolerate the type of revisory process necessary to produce a polished product--the “well-managed” law firm has more work to do than it can complete in a given span of time." Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 518 (2d ed. 1995).
Deadlines. Billable hours. Heavy workloads. All these prevent lawyers from taking the appropriate time to polish their writing. Even if I have 4 weeks to write a brief, that’s not enough because I have 3 other briefs, 4 memos, and 8 letters to write at the same time.
Revising. Editing. Rewriting. These make mediocre writing good and good writing great. But lawyers often don’t have enough time for them.
- Imposing law-practice realities on my course makes it difficult to manage, and I don't like the constraints those realities place on me.
- "Law-practice realities" are precisely what causes poor writing; ignoring them does not make them go away. Given enough of time, most lawyers can produce quality work. But most clients won't pay for it. Time constraints and billable hour considerations cause the majority of poor writing, my own included. And contingent fee situations present their own problems, as most contingent fee firms--again in my limited experience--operate on a volume business.
The time pressure of law practice doesn't allow enough revising and editing to produce great writing.
Bryan Garner has said: "The modern practice of law does not tolerate the type of revisory process necessary to produce a polished product--the “well-managed” law firm has more work to do than it can complete in a given span of time." Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 518 (2d ed. 1995).
Deadlines. Billable hours. Heavy workloads. All these prevent lawyers from taking the appropriate time to polish their writing. Even if I have 4 weeks to write a brief, that’s not enough because I have 3 other briefs, 4 memos, and 8 letters to write at the same time.
Revising. Editing. Rewriting. These make mediocre writing good and good writing great. But lawyers often don’t have enough time for them.
Wayne, I think a posting on how to manage your writing time would be most helpful. The goal in most practical situations is to get the job done: to win, to get the client a document that says what the or she wants it to say, to write a letter that is convincing and to the point, etc. And to get it done within real time constraints. With that in mind, I would like to see more writing advice on how to manage your time. How much time should I spend figuring out what my point is? How much time organizing before I write? How much time writing a first draft? How much time revising? Etc.
I suspect that most writers, including me, spend too much time on the first draft. We convince ourselves things will go faster if we produce a fairly final first draft. I think this is a trap and I've been trying to force myself to hurry through first drafts. Then I have more time left over to question my conclusions and rework my writing. The end result is better form and substance. What's more, its generally accepted advice that your revisions are better if you put the first draft away for a couple of days before you look at it again. By rushing the first draft, you're more likely to have time to set aside and come back to it later. For example, if I have 4 weeks to write a brief and 3 other briefs, 4 memos, and 8 letters to write at the same time, then I can gin out a first draft of my brief, move on to the next one and then come back to the first one. Etc. Etc.
The obvious downside to this method is that you don't have anything finished when your supervising partner walks in next week and asks, "What have you finished of the writing assignments I gave you last week?"
This is just stuff I've been thinking about and trying to put into practice. But what I'd really like to know whether you know of any "best practices" for time allocation when you sit down to write, because I think that better time management is the only way that practicing lawyers will ever find the time to adequately revise their work product. And I'd rather learn from the experts than try to figure it out on my own.
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The insufficient-time argument is a nice try at crafting an excuse for ineffective writing. Most writers, it is true, require extensive revision. But while everyone has to revise, revisions become less extensive and are more quickly performed as the writer practices his way to writing well automatically. Writers who lack time to revise are writers who haven't done enough writing.
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