Editing is at its base feedback, which many people struggle to take without feeling it's a reflection on their being. As writer and educator who specializes in teaching others how to write well, Erin Lebacqz has given and received more feedback than most. Here's what she wants you to know about working with an editor, and some things to consider as you reflect on your own work.

What are the qualities of good writing? Does it differ depending on genre?

To me, good writing evokes a response in a reader. Most genres of writing do include the reader in some ways—their interpretation, their ability to visualize a scene, their emotions and hopes and fears. By thinking about our readers, we can typically make our writing better. Good writing of any genre also allows the author’s intention to come through—including subtext. The ability to create meaning and an authentic exchange of ideas… to me, that’s good writing.

Daphne Gray-Grant has words in her blood. Born to a newspaper family, she started editing in school and never stopped. She took the time to share her experience with us and shine a light on why even the best need editors, and how the field is evolving with new technologies.

What prompted your interest in editing?

I was a “born” editor. I started doing it in high school and continued in university, primarily for my own essays. But when friends discovered I was pretty good at the job, they asked me to help them with their writing, too. And I did, because I thought it was fun! I think I gravitated to editing because I’d been a high school debater and “making sense” and being persuasive were attributes that came naturally to me. My parents owned a struggling weekly newspaper and I started working there in high school (doing admin) but once I entered university, I officially began editing part-time. I started working there full-time after graduation and then moved to a large metropolitan daily paper when I was in my late 20s, where I became Books Editor and then Features Editor.

Attorneys have more choices than ever for tools to help you write well. The trick is knowing which tool is best for what job. And a lot comes down to what you’re trying to write. In this article let’s take a look at two well-known tools and when you might choose one or the other. (Spoiler alert: The best answer might be both!)

If you listen to outsiders and many practicing lawyers, you may believe that legal writing is just a task to get through as quickly as possible. You may even believe that oral argument is the real lawyering.

Throat-clearing phrases are empty openers that delay the presentation of your argument. They slow down sentences, waste space, and frustrate readers. These phrases make the reader dig for the point, and some readers will give up before they find it.

The Illusion and Appeal of LLM Reasoning

Words like reasoning, thinking, and writing are the working tools of the legal profession. But with the rise of large language models, like OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini, these words are now used in a different way. If we don’t confront their false familiarity, we risk misunderstanding the capabilities of these tools and misplacing our trust in them.

Even if you are a highly experienced legal writer, you will face times when a brief scares you. Though writing is daily work for many lawyers, critical briefs can temporarily take over our lives and minds. Unfortunately, not all briefs bend easily to your will. Sometimes the legal issues are novel, the factual issues don’t align perfectly with the law, or maybe a client issue in the background adds extra stress. Any of these situations is enough to induce fear in the lawyer charged with writing the winning brief.

Lawyers encounter hypothetical scenarios and conditional situations daily, so they must consider what might happen or what could have happened. Two powerful tools help lawyers write about hypotheticals with precision and clarity: the subjunctive mood and conditional phrasing.

Using Generative AI to Discover What You Don’t Want

Writers often discuss the zero draft—a rough document where they begin shaping their ideas. Anne Lamott calls it the “shitty first draft.” But what if getting to that point feels impossible? Before reaching the zero draft, writers can try something new: the negative draft.

In a just world, you wouldn’t have to convince your subject matter expert colleagues that your plain language edits make their documents better. And doctors wouldn’t have to convince patients to quit smoking, and parents wouldn’t have to convince fifth graders to shower.

Every generation of senior lawyers complains that junior lawyers can’t write. But becoming a lawyer takes years of post-secondary education and apprenticeship, so it’s not reasonable to interpret this complaint to mean young lawyers are illiterate. So what’s the source of this perennial complaint and how can we address it?

Introduction to the New(ish) Technology Competence

Technology competence is not new, but in the age of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), it applies in new, more complex ways. Under ABA Model Rule 1.1 and its Comment 8, competent representation includes understanding the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology. When it issued ABA Formal Opinion 512, the ABA reaffirmed that the duty of technology competence applies to GenAI, along with all other ethical duties, including:

As advocates continue to promote the benefits of communicating clearly, questions still arise about how to define plain language. What is plain language, and how do you know if your choices are plain enough? After defining plain language, I’d like to investigate whether jargon and technical language are compatible with plain language.

I am a fan. An unabashed fan. I admire people openly and I tell them—and everyone within earshot. So if you want my advice on networking, that’s it: Be a fan.

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.

Since generative AI can produce polished text in seconds, it’s tempting to ask: Why write at all? If the end result, like a report, an email, a memo, or a presentation, looks the same whether written by a human or GenAI, why not just let the technology do the work? Because writing isn’t just about producing text. Writing is thinking.

Judges have long voiced their frustrations over verbose, confusing court briefs. And as noted in a previous blog, some courts have tightened their word limits to guard against long-winded briefs. So what can you do to make sure that your briefs are not only readable, but powerful? Professor Mark Cooney, who explained the problem of rejected legal documents in his last post, here offers ten tips for clear briefs that you can feel confident submitting to the court.

1. Sue 'em!

Prefer the simple sue or sued to elaborate alternatives. In the sentences below, for example, courts used four or five words — even six words — to say what sue or sued would’ve said in one:

Legal ghostwriters help trial lawyers save time and money. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ghostwriting is writing for someone considered the author. This practice is prevalent in the legal field.

Government proposals are a marathon of precision and persistence where every detail matters. Contract awards are guarded by a maze of technical specifications, multiple down-selection phases, and a fastidious panel of evaluators. These inherent challenges are compounded by the hyper-competitive nature of federal contracting, where there’s almost always a bigger fish.

Choosing the right pronoun to use when writing is harder than you might expect. Some pronouns serve several functions; some pronouns don’t change to show number or gender, and others seem redundant. There’s also social pressure to sound “sophisticated.” It’s no wonder writers are confused! Let's explore the proper usage of reflexive pronouns and first-person pronouns.

Somewhere along the way, most of us have heard the advice, “good writing uses transitions.” So we picked up words like however, therefore, moreover, and in addition and started sprinkling them into our sentences like magic dust. Transitions, we were told, make writing flow.

If you asked me to describe what I did last summer, I’d write an essay about exploring, in greater depth, the pitfalls of legalese. My research revealed that inflated diction, jargon, wordiness, and rambling sentences have unraveled legal documents across the country. So lawyers should by wary of forms afflicted by dense, impenetrable text. The proof is in the cases.

Legal writing often feels formulaic. It follows established patterns and uses predictable structures. But those formulas exist for good reason. Predictable structures help legal readers—judges, lawyers, clerks, and other professionals—quickly understand the argument, locate key facts, and process information. Legal readers rely on them for cognitive shortcuts to handle their caseloads.

The Tale of the Tape

In one corner, WordRake: editing software with more than 50,000 editing algorithms designed to improve clarity in professional prose.

To write effectively, you must know your message before you start. Planning your pitch is the first step to writing for your audience. Everything before this stage serves you, not the reader.

Writing isn’t a linear process with a specific set of tools that a writer must use to succeed. It’s more like the messy, disjointed process of putting together a puzzle, where you don’t find the missing pieces until the end. Only after it has taken shape do you see it more clearly. But just because the act of writing is non-linear, doesn’t mean that the process has to be unstructured.

At the end of the school year, we’re thinking about gifts for soon-to-be graduates. The ideal gift will set a graduate up for success and provide lasting value.

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.

Regardless of practice area, document creation consumes a significant portion of every lawyer’s time. According to Thomson Reuters, up to 60% of lawyer time is spent on writing, editing, and proofreading. Even after the first draft is complete, editing and proofreading can drag on for hours—and sometimes errors still slip through the cracks.

A successful letter of recommendation can open doors and make a lasting impression. A quick Internet search will tell you what to put in a letter of recommendation; but it is just as important to know what to leave out.

After years of teaching legal writing courses, Gary Kinder noticed a pattern in the mistakes people were making. Once he noticed, he knew there had to be a way to make editing for clarity and brevity quicker and easier, freeing writers up to do more detail oriented editing. We asked him about how he came to create WordRake, and he shared the story with us.

What is your role and how did you get to where you are today?

After law school, I did not want to practice just yet. I passed the Florida bar, briefly taught Legal Writing at the University of Florida, then headed West to see snow. I worked as a bellman in the Sun Valley Lodge, tried cases one day a week as the county’s assistant prosecutor, and sold my first article to a national magazine. One cold January night, while working the front door of the Lodge, I met the wife of a famous novelist, who introduced me to her husband, who introduced me to a New York agent, who turned me over to his son, who was just beginning his career representing authors. He sold my first book to a New York publisher, and he is still my literary agent.

If you’re a heartbroken poet living in an unheated garret in Paris, there’s no doubt your writing process includes suffering: the hours you spend gazing out the window, the inky splotches your fountain pen leaves on the vellum, the tear stains on the never-adequate rhymes, the crumpled drafts piling up on the floor.

Have you ever had your work edited by a grammar whiz and found a note scrawled in the margin reading “fused participle”? Like most people, you probably wondered what the heck that note meant. If you looked it up, you were confronted by a deluge of grammar terms—so you gave up. Don’t worry, we don’t blame you. It is confounding. But to write in formal prescriptive English, you must know what fused participles are and how to wrangle them.

Law is a high stress field. Lawyers finish school and descend into a meatgrinder in legal practice. The fast pace, high stakes, and need for perfection can overwhelm even the most skilled attorney. When clients are depending on you, every word counts. So how can a legal writer balance their responsibilities and their basic wellbeing? Attorney, author, and blogger Claire E. Parsons has faced these challenges head on, and has advice for other lawyers about their writing and their wellness.

What is your role and how did you get to where you are today?

I feel fortunate to have multiple roles at this stage of my career. I am as surprised by this as I am pleased about it. For my law practice, I am Of Counsel at Bricker Graydon in the Cincinnati area. I have been practicing for 15 years in the areas of school law, employment law, and litigation. I started in a smaller insurance defense firm with a strong focus on local government work. Though I started in civil litigation, I soon was asked to learn special education to meet client needs. I did that and quickly became known for my work and then moved more into general school law. I am fairly new at my current firm but I was drawn to the firm’s strong public sector and school law presence.

Language and Status: An Introduction to Two Schools of Thought

Language and status are closely intertwined. The language choices you make reveal information about your identity, background, and the formality of the situation. Two schools of thought influence our decisions on whether language use is “correct” or “incorrect:” prescriptivism and descriptivism.

It may seem efficient to use generative AI (GenAI) tools to write content for you. You’re busy. Maybe you’re not deeply invested in the final product. Maybe you just want to be done. However, GenAI often produces text that is bland, abstract, repetitive, obvious, and just awkward—especially compared to a human writer who knows the topic well.

The legal writing landscape evolves constantly, and lawyers and law professors alike must keep up. It's not just riding the wave of technological and linguist advancement, however. Professors like Susan Tanner of UofL Brandeis School of Law are shaping the future of legal writing. She shared her hopes for that future with us in the second half of her legal writing interview.

How would you like to see legal writing change in the next 10 years?

I’d like to see it get easier.

Admit it: You’re proud of your writing skills. They give you enviable power. You can wield English grammar and vocabulary like a sculptor’s chisel or a warrior’s axe. You’ve thrived in fields where your long, complex (but clear) sentences with lots of Latin syntax and vocabulary roots show your expertise. But what if, by setting these skills aside sometimes, you could make your writing even more powerful? What if you could have a greater effect on your audience by changing your writing style to better fit their needs? You can create more powerful and effective messages when you write in plain language. WordRake can help you achieve this transformation faster and more efficiently.

Dialog boxes often feel disruptive, but sometimes we’re so quick to dismiss dialog boxes that we miss key information. Some hidden gems are tucked away in WordRake’s dialog boxes.

WordRake’s complex algorithms are contextual—that’s what makes its editing suggestions so powerful and accurate. The algorithms operate using signals and triggers. So when you Rake a document and accept changes or otherwise edit the document, the available signals and triggers change. When you Rake a second time, WordRake might make additional editing suggestions your new wording revealed.

Our users rely on WordRake for quick and reliable editing for clarity and brevity. Every feature and function was designed to work within that streamlined user experience, focused solely on delivering accurate editing suggestions to improve your work. But the simplicity of the track-changes style and sleek interface means some WordRake features go unnoticed. Here are five hidden features you should check out.

When asked to edit an author’s work, how quickly can you turn around a document? If you’re an editor getting paid a flat or per-word fee, every second you save adds to your bottom line. And if you’re simply doing a favor for a colleague, you want to help them and get back to your own work quickly.

The most vocal and dedicated software users are powerhouses. To work more efficiently, power users tweak their apps and seek out hidden features. You hear about Microsoft power users, but did you know you can be a WordRake power user, too? Here’s how to use Microsoft’s customization options to customize your WordRake experience. Check out these three power user tricks.

Those unfamiliar with the law might imagine it to be very black and white--but legal writing experts like Professor Susan Tanner know that legal practice is about holding tension between truths. In this first part of her legal writing interview, Professor Tanner addresses learning to write well while balancing the needs of clients and the court.

Prepositions can add valuable detail and complexity to sentences, but they also invite nominalizations, passive constructions, and bloat. When these single-word connectors pile up in writing, you can kill the flow of your sentence and confuse your reader. What could make this worse? Multi-word prepositions.

What's scarier to an experienced lawyer, a wall of indecipherable legal jargon and Latin-derived gobbledygook, or a brief written in clear, plain language? While the average layperson may be more afraid of the unreadable block of text, Professor Mark Cooney has learned that a succinct, clearly worded document is much more threatening. 

Legal writing is its own discipline, with its own conventions. While the process of learning this complex skill and weaving it into part of your professional identity is a daunting one, Kathryn Boling, Director of the Legal Writing Program and Seattle University thinks it's rewarding experience. She shared her perspective with us.

I’m weird. I love editing. With a finished draft in hand, I’m eager to ask myself editing questions like

When you’re looking to cut words, that is a good target. It’s often redundant and space-wasting. But before your CTRL+F to delete every instance of that to get under page limits, reconsider. That is actually a complex word with multiple meanings and grammatical possibilities, which means sometimes that is grammatically necessary and sometimes it just makes your sentence much clearer.

Sometimes professors give advice that feels theoretical rather than practical. They sometimes have romantic ideas about their craft and give poetic rather than concrete feedback. Jordan Carter is not that professor. Jordan has practiced law, clerked for a judge, and now teachers young lawyers how to write, and she shares her experience and realistic perspective on the process of learning to write legal documents.

The issue statement is the first substantive content in a legal brief.^[1] It’s also the first opportunity to shape how the court and its staff view our case. So the last thing we want is for readers to struggle or lose sight of our message.

What is your role and how did you get to where you are today?

I’m currently the Director of Legal Writing and Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law in Tucson, Arizona. Before I became Director of the program in 2017, I served as Assistant Director for seven years. For the last two years, I have served as the President of the Legal Writing Institute, the largest organization of legal-writing academics in the world, with over 1000 members.

Have you ever been told not to modify certain adjectives? This advice stems from a concept known as absolute adjectives. Grammarians believe modifying these adjectives is illogical and improper because, in their view, these adjectives cannot be reduced, enlarged, modified, or compared—they’re absolute. But many of these untouchable adjectives are often modified in daily usage. And that’s okay.

Why teach legal writing? How is it different from every other kind of writing you do? Professor Diana Simon has been a litigator and a legal writing professor, and she knows from both sides how important and specialized good legal writing is. She took the time to talk to us about how to hone your legal writing craft.

What is your role and how did you get to where you are today?

I am currently an associate clinical professor of law, but my journey to get here involved some detours. Growing up with a father who was a criminal defense lawyer and a mother who taught English and journalism, it seemed inevitable that I would eventually tread their paths. I practiced law for 24 years and then began teaching after I retired. After a lengthy stint as an adjunct, five years ago I transitioned to being a full-time professor.

How do you build a curriculum for teaching the next generation of legal professionals to write? Professor Jan Levine has spent his career wrestling with this exact question. Over the last few decades he has refined his methods to distill the most effective strategies and share them with students and educators alike. Here's what he's discovered about how new legal writers learn to write effectively.

Even experienced attorneys and paralegals sometimes need writing help, and if they're lucky, they've got a writing coach like Julie Schrager on staff at their firm to give them the tools they need to succeed. Julie helps legal writers at all levels hone their craft, and she took the time to share some of her tips and experience with us.

What is your role, and how are you involved in legal writing?

I’m ArentFox Schiff’s in-house legal and business writing coach. In my job, I work closely with my fellow attorneys—from summer associates to senior partners—to improve our writing skills. I read and comment on all types of writing, from emails to memos, briefs, and client alerts, and share my thoughts about analysis, structure, content, and style. I also host presentations about a range of writing topics, from drafting effective emails to writing persuasive briefs. One of my favorite parts of the job is helping our newest attorneys adjust to the writing practices of a professional environment.

Be verbs have earned a bad reputation for creating boring writing—but they’re not alone. Copula verbs (also known as linking verbs), which include be, seem, feel, become, and remain, also create bland sentences. Though these verbs can be useful, more often they’re just feeble verbs that attract wan adjectives and slow your sentences.

Legal writing is all about precision and balance. Creating legal documents calls for precision and attention to detail, while requiring creative thinking and reasoning at each step. This can be hard for law students to manage, which is why Professors like Dyane O’Leary dedicate their lives to molding new legal minds. For her, the delicate dance between structure and innovation is a joy to lead.

What do you do when you’ve retired from the state attorney general’s office and you’re looking to do good in the world? For Professor Bev Meyers, the answer was to solve a problem she’d seen in practice—how to make legal writing better. Professor Meyers created the Legal Writing Launch program to teach lawyers to write well in every circumstance, and she shared her process with us.

Some people are born to teach, and Professor Wanda Temm is one of them. Ever since she was a child, Professor Temm has been passionate about learning and teaching. Legal writing is a complex topic, but Professor Temm’s confidence that her students can learn to write well makes her the perfect person to ask how lawyers can learn to write.

Before the first day of your 1L year, you probably spent 30 minutes reading one page of a 17th century case (and dreaded having to read nine more before class). If you were anything like me, you sighed and consulted Black’s Law Dictionary to decipher the terminology combined in doublets and triplets—and were often disappointed to find the words were near-synonyms or out of use. You rightly identified these terms as archaic and redundant. But by the end of your 3L year, you were unfazed by the English, French, and Latin terms mixed within dense blocks of text. You could even understand what you read and use it to argue for classroom clients! You were ready to enter the profession, thinking and writing like a lawyer.

We talk about plain language a lot here at WordRake, and for good reason. Our software is specifically designed to make it easier to follow plain language laws. But what are plain language laws exactly? The nation’s leading expert, Professor Michael Blasie, agreed to give us a crash course in this important legislation.

“How hungry is my reader?” When we sit down to write a web page, report, proposal, or blog post, we’re often plagued by uncertainty about our readers’ appetite for our content. Am I writing for a headline-only grazer? An executive summary diner? A footnotes-and-all chowhound? One size cannot fit all because readers differ in their appetite for detail. What’s a writer to do?

When you see several potential verbs in a short sentence, but only one of them ends with -ing—and it isn’t driving the action—your sentence may have fallen into the Gerund Trap. If the -ing word represents an abstract idea and it’s the first word in a sentence or independent clause, then you’re almost certainly in the Gerund Trap. You may be surprised to learn that your -ing word isn’t functioning as a verb at all: it’s a noun! (By definition, a gerund is a verb in its -ing form that functions as a noun.)

One misconception about editing is that it’s simply a function of time—that if given the same document and the same block of time, everybody would spot the same edits. That’s not true. Effective editors train themselves to spot specific edits. That is, they go into every editorial session knowing how wordiness usually arises and how to fix it. With practice and experience, those fixes become editorial reflexes.

Part 3 - Either annoying or disrespectful

We all have phrases and words that just rub us the wrong way. Those show up in the office a lot. Whether it’s because one specific person abuses the phrase, or because the phrase itself is problematic, some business clichés make us want to lash out in anger and frustration. To wrap up our series of 24 clichés to forget forever here are 8 more office clichés that need to go away forever.

Every year WordRake celebrates International Plain Language Day by talking to experts and sharing some of their wisdom on our blog. Today we’re interviewing plain language expert and instructor Kate Harrison Whiteside, one of the fantastic founders of the holiday, about her passion for clear communication.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

I currently wear several hats, and as a hat lover I am happy wearing them all. I am Director of and an instructor with the PlainLanguageAcademies.com. It’s been very exciting to grow with our online training platform to include French and Spanish academies, courses by South African plain language specialists and our students from around the globe.

Part 2 - Dishonesty

Business jargon is often used to hide something, whether it’s an outright lie or a little misdirection. The easiest way to spot this is to ask whether the information being offered by the cliché was needed. This is one of my go-to communication rules: if you’re feeling the need to offer descriptions no one has asked for, you’re probably not being honest. To quote a response to a denial in NBC’s The Good Place, “Okay, that’s really specific, and that makes me think you definitely did do that.” Or to quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” If you think “I should say X so I don’t sound like Y,” examine why you think your statement will sound that way to begin with. Then change your words to be more precise, or else don’t say anything at all.

Business clichés range from annoying to nonsensical to downright offensive. We’ve discussed them several times in the past, but today we’re looking at the ones you submitted—things that drive you crazy that you wish you’d never hear again. After putting the call out to friends, colleagues, and loved ones, we’re breaking down (in three parts) 24 annoying business clichés to get rid of for good.

Legal dramas are full of hot-headed lawyers overflowing with righteous indignation, ready to steamroll injustice by the force of their convictions. The courtroom scenes play out with biting repartee and shouts of “objection!” until at last the verdict is revealed, and the “good guys” walk away with their hard-earned, well-deserved victory. Opposing counsel glares as our heroic lawyer marches triumphantly to a waiting crowd of excited reporters and shares the good news.

Email has become the primary method of business communication—72% of people prefer email as their main source of business communication. But are we truly communicating? Sixty-four percent of businesspeople report having either sent or received an email that resulted in unintended anger or confusion. Research shows it’s because we’re not communicating effectively: Email senders overestimate their clarity and persuasiveness and email receivers only determine tone correctly 56% of the time.

To tighten each sentence, search for redundant words where the meaning could be clearly expressed with a single word. Most writers know to eliminate doublets and triplets, but overlook other redundancies in:

• word pairs or groups where the meaning of a word implies or includes its modifier
• word pairs or groups where the specific word implies the general category
• throw-away phrases that describe the writer’s intentions, give directions to the reader, or describe the structure of the text

It's hard to keep your mind on your task. The New York Times recently reported that brain fog is becoming an increasingly serious issue for the American workforce. The blahs that come from staring at your computer screen can be chased away by injecting some fun into your process. Enter gamification: adding elements of the gaming experience to a boring or unpleasant task to encourage you to complete it.

It’s common writing advice: Avoid redundancies. Redundant writing dilutes our message, kills subtlety, and wastes space and time. The words you waste with redundant language could be better used for examples to support your ideas or details that drive your point home and make it memorable. But redundancies are hard to spot without thinking deeply about every word in every sentence.

Everyone remembers their high school English teachers admonishing them against using the dreaded passive voice. According to composition class lore, using passive voice was the chief writing sin—and avoiding it was the key to strengthening writing. If true, then two questions remain:

1. What is passive voice, anyway? (Don’t worry: Even the most pedantic folks can get it wrong!)
2. How do we re-write sentences to avoid passive voice? (What good is pointing out a writing ill without offering a writing cure?)

In this blog post, we’ll give you a refresher on passive voice, show you how to fix it, and explain the four times when passive voice is acceptable in your writing.

Learning any language is hard, and English is no exception. Professor Stephen Horowitz has lived and worked abroad, and brings the lessons he learned from his time teaching in Japan to his instruction of Legal English. For him, clear communication with English as a Second Language (ESL) students is a matter of teaching what they need to know, while eliminating cultural jargon from his own speech. His nuanced view of plain language shed a light on how important it is to tailor communication for your target audience.

What is your role and how is it connected to clear communication?

I’m a Professor of Legal English at Georgetown Law School. I help international masters of laws (LLM) students improve their ability to comprehend and communicate in a US legal environment.

The decision to write in plain language is usually a simple matter, but is it always the best choice? Professor Daniel Edelson of Seton Hall University School of Law is a proponent of plain English, but he cautions that it may be more difficult for professionals who have learned English as a second language to understand. He shares his tips for communicating clearly with non-native English speakers in this interview for International Plain Language Day. 

What is your role and how is it connected to clear communication?

I teach legal writing and academic skills to J.D. and LL.M. students at Seton Hall University School of Law. In addition, I teach legal English and US law online to students around the world. I am responsible for teaching students to communicate in a way that will meet the expectations of the US legal profession.

Plain language isn't all about word choice and sentence structure: it's also about design. Where does information sit on a page or website? Are your graphics adding information and function, or just clutter? Information designers and plain language experts like Annie Burger are constantly thinking about how to make important content accessible and usable. She shares her experience with creating clear content with us  for International Plain Language Day.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

I am an information designer and a plain language practitioner at Hey Plain Jane. Basically, we help create clear communication and use any means to achieve that, including words and visuals. I am also a postdoctoral fellow at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. In my research I focus on plain language and how it is experienced in the real world.

We've all run into technical instructions for a product that flew way over our heads. This is annoying when it's something for fun, but when it comes to things like medication and medical devices, those confusing documents can be life threatening. That's why scientists like Kathy Walsh and her company Quality Systems Now work with the companies producing these products to make their information as clear as possible. Kathy shares the importance of plain writing in the sciences in her Q&A for International Plain Language Day.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

I am the founder and Managing Director of Quality Systems Now (QSN), an Australian consulting company that helps pharmaceutical and medical device companies gain or maintain compliance accreditations or meet the manufacturing quality expectations required to make therapeutic goods.

If you've never specifically written in plain language before, it can be difficult to know where to start. Most of us were taught that big words and complex sentences would make us sound smart and trustworthy. Once you realize that your work gains more credence when you write for your audience's needs, it can be hard to break the highfalutin habit. Fortunately, professional writing coach Leslie O'Flahavan has some concrete advice for how to communicate clearly.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

For 27 years, I’ve been the owner of E-WRITE, a writing training consultancy. My mission is to help people write well at work, and plain language provides the framework. I help people understand their relationship with their readers and develop writing skills, so they can meet readers’ needs.

What do you do if you work for the government and need to learn how to communicate clearly and concisely with the public? You go to the annual Communication School, organized by Education Director Michael Hughes of the National Association of Government Communicators! Having dedicated his life's work to honest, direct communication, Michael takes time to share his experiences in this International Plain Language Day interview.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

I am the Education Director with the National Association of Government Communicators (NAGC). In my role, I organize and plan our association’s annual Communication School, where hundreds of professionals in the fields of public affairs, media relations, internal communications and external government affairs come together to network and learn best practices on how to effectively speak, write, and deliver information.

Even with 20 years of writing, reporting, and government communications experience under her belt, National Association of Government Communicators (NAGC) President-Elect Leslie Gervasio finds legalese difficult to understand. Since the average American reads at a middle school level, Leslie knows how important it is to produce clear, readable public facing documents, and shared her thoughts with us for International Plain Language Day.

What is your role, and how is it connected to plain language?

I am a senior public engagement specialist who collaborates with state and local government clients in the transportation industry. My primary goal is to educate elected officials and the public about complex transportation projects that affect their communities and explain why they are important. Transportation is sometimes challenging to write about (who understands what an accelerated bridge construction project is, for example?!), so writing in plain language can limit frustrations and boost credibility.

Giving and receiving feedback on our writing is as much emotional work as it is intellectual. Writing is a process of opening one’s thoughts to examination and critique by whoever reads it, and whether we are deeply invested in the topic or creating a routine work report, it’s an exercise in vulnerability. Author and writing teacher Erin Lebacqz describes the editing and feedback process, and what we can do to be better at giving and receiving recommendations.

“Documents in our agency literally go through six rounds of edits!”

“My supervisor redlines my writing, but it feels like her comments are just based on personal style or preference!”

“I’ll submit a draft, and my direct supervisor will say he wants it one way, while the next level supervisor will say she wants it an entirely different way!”

Everyone needs access to certain information from their governments and service providers. Those tasked with creating those documents have a responsibility to use language that their citizens and customers can understand. Plain language consultant Fraser Buffini points out the importance of clear communication: if you don't know what a set of instructions mean, you're not going to follow them. He shares his strategies for making sure folks can access their rights and fulfill their responsibilities in the interview below.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

I run The Clear Writing Lab, my little online consultancy where I work on commercial plain language projects. I mainly work with international organizations like the EU and the UN, but enjoy working on legal projects too. I also spend a lot of my time as a Plain Language Consultant for Write Ltd. They have done so much to advocate for the plain language movement – and they essentially pioneered plain language as a commercial product. It’s such a joy to work with them. I get to work with a large team of plain language experts on a big mix of projects, and they all have seriously deep knowledge. Because plain language is such a new and evolving industry, it’s hard to find someone experienced to bounce ideas off and to talk with about what works and what doesn’t. Being able to have that sort of exchange at places like Write is crucial for the collective health of the industry.

Diplomacy requires clear communication, and empathy for the needs of allies and strangers alike. Jeremy Lang has spent his career cultivating that sense of connection and use of plain language communication as a diplomat, a plain language consultant, and an educator. He shares his insights on the importance of considering others' needs whenever you have information to share.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

I am the lead on non-formal education in the British Council in the Wider Europe region, which spans a number of countries east of the EU. I also still teach a little English and work with a friend in running a clear language consultancy. My British Council role isn’t directly connected to plain language, but I believe that using plain language is critically important in all that I do.

You can write your documents in short sentences with small words, and they may still not qualify as "plain language." As Center for Plain Language board member Casey Mank explains, plain language is about usability as much as readability. Learn more below as Casey describes what makes a document successful, and how to integrate plain language into your own writing and design.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

I serve on the board of directors at the Center for Plain Language. We are a nonprofit that helps government agencies and businesses write clearly. I’m currently serving my second term on the board and have previously been the Head Judge for the Center’s annual ClearMark Awards. The ClearMarks recognize the very best Plain Language work across industries and in 3 languages.

There are many approaches to plain language, but one central goal: clear communication. Professor Joe Kimble was introduced to the basics of editing legal writing for plain language from a 1970's book and was hooked. Professor Kimble does not use editing software—he prefers direct human feedback for his own writing. In any case, we share something important: a passion for serving readers and consumers through clear communication.

You’ve spent most of your career teaching legal writing. What brought you to this field?

I tell this story in Part 1 of Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please: The Case for Plain Language in Business, Government, and Law. It never occurred to me during law school that anything was wrong with legal writing. And I was an English-lit major in college. Then in the mid-70s (ages ago), I was working on drafting court rules for the Michigan Supreme Court. I had no training for this during law school, so I went to the law library and discovered Reed Dickerson’s Fundamentals of Legal Drafting. I noticed several pages with a list of words and phrases on the left side under the heading “Instead of.” Then on the right side were the plainer, simpler equivalents. It finally started to dawn on me. Why pursuant to instead of under? Why prior to instead of before? And so on. I soon became a convert, although my education was just beginning.

Plain language is innovative. Every time a writer decides to place their reader first, they embark on a new way to communicate. For Professor Michael Blasie, the need for clear communication sparks passion and creativity. He shares his journey from young lawyer imitating the jargon of the past to plain language expert and inventor in celebration of International Plain Language Day.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

I am a researcher, inventor, and teacher driven by one goal: a world where everyone can understand legal documents.

Plain writing isn't boring or simple: it's writing with compassion and creativity. Whether you're composing a letter, advertising a hot new product, or creating instructions for applying to a government program, you want to keep your readers engaged. Copywriter Sara Rosinsky has dedicated her career to creating copy that reaches people with the information they need. She offers her insights on how to write for your reader's benefit.

What is your role and how is it connected to plain language?

I’m an advertising copywriter. So my writing always needs to clarify what my clients are offering—the benefits of buying their products or services. I never want to confuse, bore, or exhaust my readers. I need to pull them in and transmit ideas to them quickly and painlessly.

Nothing is more unpleasant to read than a long, humorless, convoluted technical document filled with jargon and run on sentences. For technical writer Paul Stregevsky, plain language is not simply a matter of using short words and phrases. Paul advocates human writing, creating documents that engage and inform the reader. After years of fighting for his reader's right to clear, memorable communication, he shares his journey with us.

Why did you pursue a career in technical writing?

My fifth-grade teacher asked the class, “What is democracy?” My classmates began, “It’s when—” or “It’s people—”. Mr. Griffin cut them off, “It’s not a when”; “It’s not people.” I began, “A form of government in which—” “Hear that, class? A form of gov-ern-ment …” I could explain things.

Maybe you’ve heard folks complaining about how young people tend to verb their nouns—adulting comes to mind. These new word constructions come from the need to make a static thing dynamic. In the case of adulting, the fact of living an adult life isn’t just a state of being, but takes constant and active maintenance. Verbing your nouns shows this constant state of motion.

If your job requires you to write regularly, consider your readers and today’s changing exposure to words when drafting your work. With every day’s onslaught of content from emails, text messages, social media, and meetings—both on and offline—modern office workers don’t have the time or patience to read unnecessary words to get to your point. Wordy writing is a great way to get someone to close an email or dump a proposal without finding out what it’s about.

As paralegals, time is money. Our days are filled with multitasking and responding to attorney and client demands. We appreciate the latest and greatest software that helps us perform with speed and accuracy. It’s necessary to pick software that fits our writing needs and expedites the process of producing legal documents. But we must also know how to use our software to its full potential so we can get the most benefit from it, in turn benefiting our clients.

Nominalizations—verbs or adjectives that have been converted into nouns—are common sources of obscurity, wordiness, and needless complexity in professional writing. While nominalizations may seem more formal when they appear in phrases like “reach a decision” or “make an assumption,” that requires equating formality with stodginess.

Effective business communication relies on clear, concise, specific, and meaningful writing. Clichés fail all four requirements. In your first draft, a cliché may feel so easy and familiar to write that it seems irreplaceable. But, upon revision, you’ll see that clichés are unoriginal, broad generalizations—and often redundant. Delete them. Replace them. Your readers will reward you with their attention.

A major advantage of eliminating clichés from your business writing is the clarity and precision it brings. Without the clutter of overused phrases, your writing will be more persuasive and impactful, and you’ll be seen as more authentic, authoritative, and trustworthy.

Being understood in writing can be complex. The words we use express our expectations and tone, but readers often misinterpret the intention the author wishes to convey. In this edition of our business writing education series, author and book coach Anne Janzer explores how our expression of authority can unintentionally derail teamwork, and what to do about it.

Antonio manages a distributed team with people in different time zones. The team interacts daily through emails or messaging.

Antonio is frustrated that the team doesn’t collaborate well unless they’re all in a room together. When he tosses out an idea over email, either everyone agrees, or no one responds.

It’s one thing to want to communicate clearly, but knowing how to do it is a different matter. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) made it easier last month by releasing Plain Language standards. These standards supply a framework for governments and private entities to make their publications more accessible.

Paralegals with excellent writing skills know the importance of editing and proofreading their work. After all, clear and effective legal documents are more than words on a page—they can shape opinions and influence lives.

Legal writing requires the ability to present clear and persuasive arguments, which is why legal briefs need effective organization and structure. Two tools for enhancing the persuasive power of a brief are the Table of Contents (ToC) and point headings. By leveraging technology and honing organizational skills, lawyers can improve the clarity, coherence, and impact of their writing. Technology can simplify creating, organizing, and editing legal briefs so you can focus on finding the most persuasive arguments. In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of large- and small-scale organization and how to achieve it, as well as technology tools to help you construct a better legal brief.

Effective legal writing involves connecting compelling arguments with cited support from relevant legal authorities. A clear understanding of these authorities’ hierarchy amplifies the persuasive strength of your assertions. Mastering tools like the Table of Authorities (TOA) in Microsoft Word can improve your productivity. Combining legal writing skills with technological assistance elevates the quality of your work, ensures adherence to court timelines, and helps you concentrate on your argumentation.

Legal and business writing require a blend of precision, clarity, persuasion, and organization. With so many necessary elements, most legal and business documents are long and require more structure—for writers and readers—than a typical document. For writers, structure helps you maintain focus while crafting document content; for readers, structure guides them through the document and helps them see logical connections. Structure supports understanding, so finding ways to easily implement and adhere to structure will help you improve substance.

Business and legal documents must be precise, clear, and carefully structured because they serve as legal records, define relationships, and document important decisions. But writing in these fields is rarely done alone. A combination of authors, resources, and tools contribute to the final document. Subtle adjustments can change meaning or transform a good piece into an exceptional one. Tracking the evolution of a document and the source of changes is important to understand how and why the document changed so you can make sure it doesn’t drift from its goals.

Something feels off about your new robot co-worker—besides the fact that your co-worker is a robot. This robot produces grammatically correct text at lightning speed. The writing seems natural, not robotic. It’s impressive, but is this text good and should you adopt it as your own?

When you’re writing for work, it can be tempting to show off. Big words and elaborate details make us feel confident, certain that they make us seem smart and impressive. In reality, overly complex writing can make your work hard to understand, or worse, too much of a bother to read. Author and writing teacher Erin Lebacqz investigates what can go wrong when we write for ego rather than expression, and how to keep our words simple and clear.

Intensifiers are like vitamins— they’re meant to strengthen but become poisonous when you exceed the recommended dose. Let’s save you from your childhood writing (and chewable vitamin) mistakes.

Intensifiers are words or expressions designed to intensify the words around them, but often have the opposite effect. They are usually adjectives and adverbs, and they are particularly bad when used to modify absolute words. Common intensifiers include very, really, incredibly, and extremely.

Legal writing challenged me. I was already a good writer: I obtained my bachelor's degree in English literature, and I had written more academic papers than the average college student. I thought I’d earned my right to proclaim mastery. However, legal writing was radically the opposite of everything I learned in my B.A. program—so much so, that it leveled the playing field and catapulted me to the starting line again with everyone else. The literary world is all about creative freedom and self-expression through liberal use of writing devices like metaphors, allegory, etc. In contrast, legal writing is technical or business writing where clarity of thought and economy of words is key. To master legal writing, I had to unlearn deeply instilled and contrary habits.

In sales and marketing you’re advised not to talk past the point of the sale. That means when the buyer says yes, you stop trying to sell them. Continuing to talk may turn your yes into a no. This is also good advice for writing: Once you’ve made your point, stop.

Though much writing advice focuses on how to cut to the point, little advice discusses how to stop once you’ve reached it. Yet restraint will make your sentences powerful and your documents readable.

Writers slow down their sentences with unnecessary words that delay the point. They may do this because middle school English teachers told them to use transitions; they read great 19th century writers renowned for languid and balanced sentences; or they’re trying to sound sophisticated by relying on industry clichés. Your readers won’t care why you write as you do—they will only care that they must read it. So do them a favor and cut the clutter.

One of the most difficult parts of writing is figuring out which information is necessary to convey, and which is excess background information that detracts from the overall idea you’re trying to convey. Take a journey with author and nonfiction book coach Anne Janzer as she explores which facts you need to pack, and which you can leave behind.

For government organizations to run smoothly, it’s important that employees stay informed and stay on the same page. Read on to learn three key aspects to remember when creating effective educational content for government employees.

Who must comply with plain language laws? Nearly everyone in business. According to Professor Michael Blasie, the leading expert on plain language laws, in addition to the federal government’s plain language laws, every state in the United States and Washington DC have plain language laws too. In an earlier article, we discussed federal plain language requirements; this article focuses on state laws that determine how private actors must write.

Writing in active voice is often cited as a core part of plain language. Though the idea seems simple, it becomes confusing when you see phrases like active voice and active verbs used interchangeably. In this article, we’ll clarify the difference and help you choose the right voice to communicate your ideas. The better your understanding of language, the better you’ll communicate with your audience—and that’s the goal of plain language!

Writing in plain language helps you communicate with your audience. If that’s not enough incentive to write clearly and organize information logically, then consider this: Professionals throughout the United States and around the world are required to write in plain language.

A strong legal case needs paralegals with strong writing skills: a paralegal’s writing sets the foundation for important legal documents, which can impact case outcomes. Unfortunately, wordiness and lack of clarity can easily become bad writing habits for paralegals. Intentional word choice and editing can turn your writing from mediocre and rambling to powerful and precise. In this article, we’ll cover a few sources of wordy habits and keys to good legal writing.

Even the best writers fall back on common expressions that add unnecessary and repetitive words to their writing. This repeated information is most often added as time-related information to sentences in which the verb tense or another part of speech already shows the reader the time information.

If you don’t know where your business stands, you won’t know how to move towards future success. And if the data or roadmap is incomprehensible, your company could make a costly mistake. Follow the writing techniques below to create useful, usable marketing reports to guide your organization’s marketing strategies.

Nonprofit organizations and universities usually rely on two main sources of funding: public grants and private donations. Public grants usually draw straightforward proposals. Usually, the grantor issues an RFP or other notice of funding that includes instructions about what information they want, and sometimes, what format the information should be in. Private donations are harder to apply for because they lack a formalized process.

Small changes make a big difference in your writing’s clarity and brevity. One of the best professional writing tips is to simplify. Simpler is better for sentence structure, word choice, and document length.

No matter how many times you’ve done it, writing a proposal is always a little nerve-wracking. Whether you're applying for grant funding or pursuing professional services contracts, pressure to distinguish your organization from the competition and show your expertise is high.

If your organization cuts cost but doesn’t increase value, then you’re doing transformation wrong. This is a sign you’re adding complexity and processes that clients don’t want to pay for and your lawyers hate. But don’t give up. It is possible to ease burdens, elevate work, and satisfy clients simultaneously. The key is implementing improvements that increase value from the client’s perspective. To do so, it's time to move our focus from process to value. Take a holistic approach to workflow improvement by using the value stream framework.

Terminology note: I’ll use the term “patients” to refer to people who have direct lived experience with a health condition and who receive services from the healthcare system. Different people may prefer different terms—like client, service user, and self-advocate, among others—depending on context.

Terminology note: I’ll use the term “patients” to refer to people who have direct lived experience with a health condition and who receive services from the healthcare system. Different people may prefer different terms—like client, service user, and self-advocate, among others—depending on context.

You have carefully crafted your report, blog post, or project proposal, and now it’s time to get other people’s feedback.

Asking for feedback is never easy. Ideally, everyone will rave about how brilliant you are and maybe contribute one or two gems that make the work even better.

Realistically, you know you will receive feedback you don’t want to deal with. But you also know that it should improve the result. And perhaps your workplace requires review cycles or external approvals.

So you steel yourself and send the work out for review or approval, and wait for those responses.

And wait.

[Cue the sound of crickets.]

You need to write an important report or blog post. It’s a task like any other, right? You set aside a block of time and swear not to leave the desk until it’s done.

If you have high standards for your work, you may not be pleased with what you write. Being diligent, you keep going, perhaps banging your head against a metaphorical wall or flashing back to late night papers in college. It takes longer than you hoped to get to a decent draft and the process isn’t fun.

Does this sound familiar?

It gets worse. Because the experience was unpleasant, the next time you have a writing project, you put it off. (Who is eager to do something unpleasant?) Now you’re up against a deadline, perhaps working in the evening or weekend.

Thinking of writing as a single task puts too much pressure on the work and kicks off a vicious cycle that makes you avoid your writing projects. Break that cycle!

Terminology note: I’ll use the term “patients” to refer to people who have direct lived experience with a health condition and who receive services from the healthcare system. Different people may prefer different terms—like client, service user, and self-advocate, among others—depending on context.

Terminology note: I’ll use the term “patients” to refer to people who have direct lived experience with a health condition and who receive services from the healthcare system. Different people may prefer different terms—like client, service user, and self-advocate, among others—depending on context.

I was in Boise, Idaho yesterday and you know how conservative that state can be and we went out for a walk to get a coffee and it was a cold day and within a quarter hour I must  have seen 15 people with face piercings and green hair.

Confused? You’re not alone. The paragraph above is a mess. The language is straightforward, there aren’t any very long words, it’s written in the first person and it’s chatty. These are all hallmarks of writing in plain English, but… Did you understand it at first reading? Very unlikely. Apart from being badly punctuated, little thought has gone into how the information is presented. If ideas are jumbled and illogical, you’re in trouble.

K.I.S.S.

Spotting plain English in a corporate report can be like finding Waldo! It’s because people often fear they’ll look stupid by presenting complex ideas simply. But, making information accessible is smart. In fact, it’s the whole point of communication. If your reader will need a dictionary to get through the first paragraph, it’s time for a rethink. Plain English will be your ally.

Be a straight shooter. Follow the K.I.S.S. design principle: “Keep It Short and Simple” (or more bluntly, “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”). Albert Einstein was on to something when he said, “Everything should be as simple as possible but not one bit simpler.”

An idea for a new project comes to you when you’re in the shower. Or you’re on the way home from work when you think of the perfect words to convince your executive team to fund your initiative.

Breakthrough insights and inspired ideas often appear when we’re far from our desks.

That’s no accident. It’s an artifact of the way that our brains work. In this post, we’ll look at how you can set up your brain to generate insights when you’re doing other things. (It’s like crowdsourcing within your own head. More on that below.)

When we first meet someone, we ask ourselves, “Is this person friend or foe?” Our subconscious—or conscious—answer decides what follows. That’s why the legal profession must be so careful when dealing with the public. Legal language is too easily felt as the language of an enemy—an alienating Petri dish for mistrust.

Your firm knows they must implement a knowledge management system to be competitive, and they have a plan for how it’s going to happen—but why are there still so few materials in the database and why does it still seem so hard to use? When a firm’s knowledge management system is not allowed to reach its full potential, the company loses value through wasted time searching for or recreating what already exists. An important part of lawyers’ work is applying knowledge to the documents they create and retrieving knowledge stored within those documents; effective knowledge management and efficient, high-quality document creation go hand-in-hand. In this interview, knowledge management and innovation expert Jordan Galvin helps us understand the barriers law firms face when building knowledge management systems and how a firm’s knowledge management execution can set its innovation initiatives up for success.

There are many barriers to effective knowledge management in law firms, but human emotions around ownership and workplace culture can be some of the hardest to overcome. In this interview, knowledge management expert Marlene Gebauer sheds light on the barriers to knowledge management, including the need to rethink teamwork between people and between technologies. She also details how knowledge management and technology can affect document creation, and who will make a good fit to enter the dynamic knowledge management field. Read on to learn more.

Legal documents are full of valuable knowledge. They are also the easiest source of knowledge to improve the firm’s future document creation and strategies. But a sea of data is useless unless what you need can be easily found—good knowledge management is the difference between time wasted and time saved. Legal tech has made incredible advances for knowledge management, but its reputation as a silver bullet can actually make legal work harder rather than easier, unless we know how to harness its power. Knowledge management expert and former lawyer Jack Shepherd warns against assuming tech can automatically improve legal practices, and explains the importance of defining goals, determining realistic strategies, and putting in the work when implementing knowledge management technologies. Read on to find out why knowledge management is essential to improved document creation, and how the barriers, and solutions, to reaping these benefits are not what (or who) you thought they might be.

Are there moments at work that make you think, “There has to be a better way to do this”? Everyone has had this thought at some point, but it takes significant time and coordination with coworkers and experts to investigate these workplace inefficiencies which slow everyone down. There may be pushback against changing existing systems from “the way it’s always been,” but making the investment in knowledge management systems can have substantial payoff beyond relieving your pet peeves. In this interview with lawyer and knowledge management expert Bárbara Gondim da Rocha, learn how knowledge management can develop solutions that keep your company profitable and keep clients satisfied, even with a competitive market and added difficulties of remote work in the pandemic.

The purpose of knowledge management is to collect, organize, and enable the effective use of knowledge across an organization. The most successful law firms understand that knowledge is an asset and rely on knowledge management professionals to turn it into a competitive advantage. Someone can take a firm to the next level when they have a deep understanding of what constitutes valuable knowledge and the ability to anticipate when and how others will need to use that knowledge. If that person can create an industry-wide map of that knowledge, then she can create a paradigm shift. That’s exactly what Nicola Shaver is doing as lawyer-turned-founder of Legaltech Hub. In this interview you’ll learn how Nicola views document content as unstructured data and how that insightful approach allows her to create long-term value.

Technology is constantly evolving, and it’s up to every company to stay relevant and competitive in their field by adopting technology to improve their practice. Lawyers are knowledge workers, and their valuable knowledge, from knowing local rules and precedents, to partner capabilities and judge preferences, must be recorded to be readily usable and make litigation more affordable and accessible to clients. Knowledge management expert and former litigator Evan Shenkman sheds light on how tech has propelled legal knowledge management to new heights, to the point it has become a necessity to attract and retain clients.

Even if we’re winning at our job, know more than the average Joe, and are a member of an influential alma mater, clients and peers often judge us most by how well we write. In a nutshell—do they understand what we are saying? Success is a sure bet if we write well. Those skilled at unravelling verbiage, waffle, and corporate speak, who can relieve gobbledygook of its burden, cleave away self-importance, and medicate severity, are welcome in any team.

Successful professional writing starts with clear thinking.

In the rush of deadlines and projects, it’s tempting to jump right in and knock something out. Faster is better, right? Instead, take a moment to set a course before you write.

This post offers a simple, four-question checklist to complete for every work-related project, whether a social media post, a legal brief, or an email to a client. Make it part of your writing process and you’ll find it makes the whole process faster, easier, and more successful.

“The biggest misconception is that paralegals are clerical staff. And, although a paralegal may perform clerical duties—and make no mistake, clerical staff are important to a law firm—a paralegal’s function can go far beyond clerical duties.

A properly trained paralegal will have a handle on several substantive areas of the law and can assist in functions such as drafting documents, investigating claims, engaging with clients, preparing witnesses, and planning trial strategy.”

— Keith Shannon, paralegal educator

Pronouns help writers shorten their sentences and vary their word choices so writing doesn’t seem repetitive. A pronoun is a short, generic word that replaces a noun. It can have one of three jobs:

What difference can three or four letters make? When they form pronouns, these short words can have a big impact. Pronouns are words used in place of other nouns. They reduce repetition, which improves the clarity, pace, and flow of a sentence or paragraph. Without pronouns, sentences would be longer and messier and communication would become more difficult. In a world without pronouns, reading and speaking would be painfully boring. To see the difference pronouns can make, consider these two sentences.

If you confuse the words affect and effect, you’re not alone. These two words are some of the most commonly confused words in the English language! Because they sound alike, it can be even harder to keep them straight.

What happens before a brief gets filed or a case gets argued? The visible, exciting, and sometimes glamorous parts of legal practice are built on the hard work of a behind-the-scenes team. In this interview, veteran paralegal Shawn D. Andrews explains how litigation paralegals keep the judicial process moving forward and provides tips for how you can be a high-value member of the legal team.

The legal world is vast and there are many ways to contribute to it aside from being a lawyer. The narrow view of who may contribute to law seems even smaller when it comes to contracts (as compared to litigation), but that’s about to change. In this interview, Richard Lackey explains his new role in legal technology as a contract review specialist at LegalSifter and shares what he’s learned from his multi-dimensional experience as a legal translator and paralegal.

Paralegals bring with them diverse skillsets, perspectives, and experiences that can elevate a law practice. One often-overlooked path is that of a lawyer educated outside of the United States who chooses to use their skills in a paralegal role. In this moving interview with lawyer-turned-paralegal Renee Tiun, she discusses her path to becoming a paralegal and how her unique experience gives her an advantage when serving international tax clients.

The most efficient legal service team combines the complementary strengths of its members. While lawyers may understand the “why” of the work, paralegals understand the “how.” And, together, they meet client needs.

It’s time to re-imagine law firms and legal work. Consider a world where paralegals can hold ownership interests in firms, represent clients, and do substantive legal work. Though regulators in the United States are just now exploring these options, it’s a reality in Ontario, Canada. Recently, paralegal Melanie Henriques became a partner in her firm. In this interview, Melanie discusses her path to partnership and how paralegals can help law firms provide cost-effective legal services to clients who would otherwise go unrepresented.

Though paralegals often help with document-creation tasks, they are not merely typists. Paralegals have a deep understanding of a firm’s workflows and, if given the opportunity and respect, can modernize and maintain the firm’s knowledge base. In this insightful interview with paralegal-turned-lawyer-and-legal-technologist Ryan Groff, he explains how paralegals can help firms reach new heights of productivity and efficiency through technology.

Contrary to what many lawyers believe, paralegal work is not synonymous with clerical work. A well-trained paralegal can draft documents, investigate claims, engage with clients, and more. Each of these skills is high value for any law firm, and these are the types of skills Keith Shannon teaches in the Paralegal Technology Department at Central Piedmont Community College. In this interview, Keith explains how he moved from practicing law to teaching paralegals and the types of challenges he trains the paralegals in his program to meet.

Paralegals are essential but often-overlooked members of legal services teams. Because of the hierarchical nature of the legal profession, many people refuse to see how much value paralegals can contribute to a firm. That’s a mistake. In this interview with paralegal-turned-lawyer Elmer Thoreson, he uses his experiences from both roles to challenge the hierarchy. Learn from Elmer as he reveals the many ways paralegals can contribute to an effective, efficient, innovative legal practice that clients will love.

Paralegals are essential to the legal practice because they have a practical understanding of how to complete each piece of the legal process and how each piece connects. All legal professionals can obtain better outcomes by working together and drawing on the unique skills each person brings to the team. In this interview, veteran paralegal Tisha Delgado, ACP® explains how lawyers can better work with paralegals and leverage their technical know-how for success. Read on to learn how the right combination of software, technology, and planning will enable a paralegal to work efficiently, which helps the law firm thrive.

“Paralegals hold a significant and invaluable position, offering skills and performing job duties that are indispensable,” says paralegal educator Debra C. Galloway. Seeing the value that paralegals bring to legal work, Debra was called to teach paralegals. She has been a paralegal educator at Midlands Technical College for seven years.

Paralegals are key players in law firms and can set the tone for clients. They’re often the first voice or the first face that a client encounters when seeking legal advice. With formal training, paralegals are better prepared to take on that important role. In this interview with certified paralegal and professor of paralegal studies Jackie Van Dyke, she explains the value of training and shines a light on the essential skills paralegals bring to the table.

What is your role and how did you get to where you are today?

I am a certified paralegal, professor of paralegal studies, and the owner and legal writing coach at The Paralegal Writer™  (www.theparalegalwriter.com). I offer writing courses to the paralegal community with a focus on helping paralegals pass the NALA Skills Exam. I am honored to have the opportunity to teach at both my alma maters and to write for numerous paralegal publications. I also appreciate the honor of currently serving on the Continuing Education Council and Paralegal Educators/School Relations Committee for NALA.

Effective communication with clients is required for success as a legal professional. In this enlightening interview, paralegal Berlinda Bernard debunks some myths about paralegals, what paralegals do, and how writing skills are fundamental to her work.

Many privacy professionals will persuade by drawing on the fear that private information may be disclosed, but Shaun takes a different approach: He draws interesting distinctions between similar topics and asks questions that will make you think twice.

User-generated and crowd-sourced content have become familiar terms with the rise of social apps. Though user-generated content has existed outside of the social media context for years, we still fail to grasp its significance in our business and personal lives away from social apps.

Have you heard about the importance of metadata but you’re not sure what it is or how to address it? Metadata is data about data, and lawyers are must keep it confidential according to the ethics rules. In this interview with document privacy expert Chris Cangero, you’ll learn about the information in your documents—that doesn’t appear on the page—and discover where it fits in your privacy and security analysis.

Anyone using technology should read the fine print in privacy policies, especially legal professionals. The tools used in the business and practice of law have access to confidential client information—and we’re obligated to protect that information. To adequately protect client confidences, we must know which questions to ask, and understand the risks and benefits of using technology.

In this enlightening interview, privacy expert Donata Stroink-Skillrud explains how to assess privacy policies and which questions to ask when you’re considering new software. Donata also draws attention to potential privacy issues that are often buried within privacy policies, like third-party permission to access data. This interview is the playbook for responsible privacy assessment. Read on for Donata’s helpful advice.

What is your role and how is it related to privacy law?

I am a lawyer licensed in Illinois, and I have been practicing in privacy and technology law for about five years. I am also a Certified Information Privacy Professional, and the President and legal engineer behind Termageddon. Termageddon is a Software as a Service company that has generated thousands of privacy policies and kept them up to date with changing privacy legislation. As the legal engineer, I have drafted policy questionnaires, answer options, and millions of variations on text, so I am very familiar with the privacy policy requirements for privacy laws all over the world. I am also the Vice-Chair of the American Bar Association’s ePrivacy Committee and the Chair of the Chicago Chapter of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. I am also the Chair of the American Bar Association’s ePrivacy Committee, member of the ABA’s Science and Technology Council and the Cybersecurity Legal Task Force. I am also the Chair of the Chicago Bar Association’s Privacy and Cybersecurity Committee and an American Bar Foundation Fellow. 

Privacy policies and regulations can seem like an inscrutable web of unmanageable obligations. However, a unified theory of privacy can help these seemingly disparate ideas fall into place and reveal significance. In this powerful interview with privacy expert Cat Coode, she explains how discrete information is more important than we might expect; how we fundamentally misjudge the information we trade away; and how overbroad data collection practices put users and companies at risk. Once you see how all the pieces of the privacy puzzle come together, you’ll re-think your approach to data collection and its implications.

For this interview series, we spoke with privacy experts who looked beyond the obvious, expected, and attention-grabbing privacy issues, to the mundane issues that average people face—but may not recognize. South African privacy expert Nerushka Bowan shows us that privacy is truly an everyday issue, from haphazard use of common social applications; to hard copies of documents left unsecured on desks; to selfies inadvertently showing important documents. Read on for an eye-opening interview about common privacy matters.

When lawyers hear “inadvertent disclosure” or “exposed client confidences,” they immediately think of stray emails and shadowy hackers. That narrow understanding means we don’t recognize when other issues of confidentiality may be in play. This interview will broaden your thinking.

Even the most lauded legal writers struggle in some way. Too wordy. Too granular. Can’t start. Can’t stop. Wedded to the language of caselaw. But these struggles make sense when we think about the importance of the outcomes of our legal writing. The heavy weight of our work keeps us from doing what our writing should do most: Tell a compelling, human story that makes the reader care. Journalists' words bear a similar weight—a news story can shape the way the world thinks.

The most significant difference between lawyers and journalists is that journalists put the story first, then they allow the story to drive structure and flow. Lawyers rarely apply storytelling to their writing. In this interview, award-winning journalist, blogger, and lawyer Bob Ambrogi shows how we can bring journalistic storytelling into legal writing to draft better documents. (He will also make you laugh!)

Let's Talk About Business Jargon

Business jargon, also known as business-speak or corporate jargon, is rampant in the workplace. While you may think you’re reinforcing your insider status or using a fun turn-of-phrase to efficiently make your point, you may be perpetuating harmful stereotypes and otherwise diminishing your message. So here’s the rule about how and when to use tacky jargon to improve your communication: Don’t use it.

Journalists excel at asking good questions and finding the story, which are the foundation of good writing. Good questions will reveal to you the story yearning to be written. Knowing your story will help you plan and focus your writing. And with that focus, you’ll know what’s important to your audience and deliver on deadline.

There is no requirement that legal writing must be boring. Let’s take direction from journalists: Make introductions captivating; craft animated sentences that compel you to keep reading; and make general audiences feel smart about specific topics. We can learn these skills from journalists through reading their work, and, if we’re lucky, through journalists' edits on their own work.

In a creative—and brave—step away from the status quo, in 2010, top law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP hired Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jesse Katz to help the firm’s lawyers write better documents. We interviewed Jesse about his role and got his advice about lessons from journalism that we can apply to law. Here, Jesse models how to say more with fewer words and inspires you to write legal briefs worthy of the front page.

Traditional, honorable, and deferential are common descriptors for communication in the legal profession. Each word conjures thoughts of the formal and respectful tone which is used throughout legal writing—especially pleadings like briefs, motions, declarations, and responses. Embracing formality in legal writing does not require dense legalese or overly complex language, but it does require excluding casual expressions or colloquialisms.

Remote work makes effective communication more important than ever. One of the most common communication methods is email—yet email can be tricky to get right. We often stumble with tone, focus, clarity, and brevity. Since email is vital to business, we must get better at writing emails for our reader’s benefit. Only our readers determine whether we have succeeded.

Part 3: Creating a Culture of Change in Law Firms

If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then what’s the recipe for a culture that works? In the final part of this three-part series, change management expert Maya Markovich lays out the ingredients for a culture of change. She addresses both sides of the recruiting equation and explains what to look for in the change agents of tomorrow.

Part 2: Change Management in Law Firms

Convincing people to embrace change is the biggest challenge of change management. It requires a combination of structural changes that reward change, cultural changes that encourage it, and individuals who are open to new approaches. If any elements are overlooked, change efforts are unlikely to succeed.

Part 1: Behavioral Economics and Legal Business

There’s a science to changing minds and changing behaviors—and Maya Markovich has studied it. She combines her Masters in social and organizational psychology with her JD and practice experience in her role at Nextlaw Labs, a global legal technology accelerator and innovation catalyst. In this three-part interview, Maya explains what drives behavior and why understanding it matters in the legal profession today.

When a law student graduates from law school, they quickly realize there is more to learn than what law school taught them. WordRake recently spoke with Michael Bloom, founder of Praktio, an online learning platform for lawyers. Michael is a former lawyer and law school professor turned tech entrepreneur.

A strong writer doesn’t just deliver information, she convinces you of its veracity and value. A strong communicator doesn’t just talk, she listens to uncover and understand her audience’s needs. The most successful professionals and executives do both. Together, these skills make you a trusted leader. And whether you are trusted to lead is the difference between a rainmaker and a service partner. If you dream of becoming a power player, this interview is for you.

Being busy does not mean you’re being productive. If you work long hours struggling to complete your to-do list each day, but you aren’t reaping the rewards of your work, then you may be busy—not productive.

Effectively communicating about complex topics like health, law, and finance requires that we think about what we know and who else needs to know it. The problem arises when we stop the process after verifying our knowledge—and without getting to the reader’s needs. It happens because experts often conflate communicating accurately with communicating clearly. But they’re not the same.

In this engaging interview, Ben Riggs confronts the assumptions that lead to unclear communication and shows us the empathy that we should have for readers facing life-changing decisions. Read on for Ben’s lessons in plain language and health communication through storytelling.

When it comes to plain language, law and finance are two of the industries most reluctant to change. But changing gets easier when you have a plain language partner who knows how to guide the transition. That’s where plain language expert Andrew Pegler excels. He converts legal contracts and business reports to plain English, then trains the organization’s lawyers and staff to do the same.

Andrew has built his career convincing corporations and law firms that plain language has brand advantages, then helping them write in a new way. Andrew’s work is a study in successful change management. He delivers his plain English workshops at an appropriate level, respects and develops the existing knowledge and skills of staff, and provides useable writing and editing tips and techniques. 

We spoke with Andrew about plain language in law. In this interview, you’ll learn how plain language is a brand advantage and get eight tips for using plain language in your own writing. Read on for Andrew’s lessons.

Have you ever considered that legalese might be a barrier to lawyers’ understanding, too? Once lawyers get outside of their practice area, the language they encounter feels like confusing legal jargon. This makes it harder for lawyers to volunteer to help everyday people who need legal services. So even when there’s the desire to help—and an elegant, streamlined structure to facilitate helping, like Paladin—confusing legal language still diminishes lawyers’ ability to provide legal services.

It’s eye-opening to discover that legal jargon confuses lawyers, too. And it’s heartbreaking to realize how that impacts access to justice. But access to justice entrepreneurs Felicity Conrad and Kristen Sonday are changing that. They’ve built a technology platform to help legal teams run more efficient pro bono programs, and as part of that effort, they’ve tackled how access to justice is wrapped up in jargon.

We spoke with Felicity and Kristen about how plain language impacts access to justice. In this interview, they illustrate how language is an ever-present issue: from top-25 languages that are entirely unrepresented in law; to legal euphemisms that obscure the social justice implications of laws; to the legalese that makes it hard for lawyers to help the public. These insights will make you re-think what you think you know about legal communication. Read the interview now.

Plain language expert Russell Willerton believes that professionals have an ethical imperative to write plainly in certain situations. He hopes to get us to spend less energy talking “at” someone and more energy talking “with” someone in a true dialogue. Put simply: Some situations require more care than others.

Unfortunately, many of us never consider how a reader comes to information in their lives and the outside factors that may impede their ability to comprehend the message. We think only about what we want to say and we forget about the reader’s human needs. To address that problem, Russell created the BUROC framework (Bureaucratic, Unfamiliar, Rights-Oriented, and Critical) to identify situations in which audiences would benefit from plain language.

We spoke with Russell to learn more about how plain language relates to access to justice and empathy for the reader. In this interview, Russell illustrates how unclear language is a barrier to understanding and harms decision-making. Read on for more insight on plain language and justice.

Consider the consequences of unclear communication. It’s more than closing a browser window in frustration or scratching your head in confusion. In this straightforward interview, plain language expert Barbra Kingsley, PhD gives real-world examples of how misunderstanding seriously harms people.

Barbra’s interview is a wake-up call to professionals, people in power positions, and governments. When people encounter information they don’t understand, they don’t keep searching—they give up. We have an ethical obligation to help them before that happens. We do that through plain language. Read on as Barbra makes a convincing case for plain language in law, health, finance, and anywhere important rights are at stake.

Plain language helps people to find what they need, understand what they find, and have enough information to act on and meet their needs. The intersection where health and law meet seems like one of the least likely places where you’d find plain language. But Professor Christopher Trudeau is changing that.

We spoke with Chris about plain language and health literacy. In this interview, Chris explains how “every facet of modern life can be improved or enhanced by plain language” and shares what he’s learned from his research. Read on for Chris’s plain language insight.

Using plain language makes good business sense—and plain language expert Deborah S. Bosley, PhD has dedicated her work to helping corporations and government entities communicate clearly.

In this straight-forward interview, Deborah makes a clear case for plain language in business and civic life and she challenges all professionals to take responsibility for public understanding. Read on as Deborah explains the ethical imperative to write in a manner that’s easy for the public to understand and offers insight on clear communication.

Our language choices can create a barrier to understanding, but they can also do something worse. The words we use can disempower, retraumatize, and confuse the people most needing the resources—who are often overlooked by the professionals duty-bound to serve them.

To truly be service-oriented professionals, we must put clear, compassionate communication first. We must go beyond plain language to trauma-sensitive language. Dorna Moini, CEO and Co-founder of Gavel understands these needs and she’s dedicated to providing access to justice through technology that serves the people.

We spoke with Dorna about how plain language impacts access to justice. In this interview, Dorna paints a moving picture of the importance of language and urges us, as officers of the court and protectors of the law, to expand legal information to members of the public. Read on for Dorna’s insights.

Editors help writers meet the needs of their audience. Plain-language editors do even more. Plain-language editors evaluate written content, assess how easy it would be for a member of the general public to understand and act on it, then edit the content to better meet audience needs. This approach is backed by science and user testing and is highly contextual. It takes an expert to get it right. Iva Cheung is that expert.

We spoke with Iva Cheung—one of the most authoritative voices on plain language editing—about plain language and access to justice. In this interview, Iva illustrates how unclear language is a barrier to understanding and therefore exercising rights. Read on for Iva’s insightful and moving interview on plain language and justice.

Anyone who writes for the public must do so clearly. While it’s easy to complain about legalese, business-speak, and medical jargon, unclear writing that harms the public can come from another place: the news.

Since 1975, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies has been leading the charge for journalistic integrity and clear writing with hopes to fortify journalism’s role in a free society. As stewards of public information, journalists must deliver the information in a manner that the public can understand.

We spoke with renowned author, former journalist, and senior scholar for Poynter, Roy Peter Clark, about plain language and its connection to a concept called “civic clarity.” Read this interview for insight on making hard facts easy reading. Then ask yourself the 20 questions for civic clarity that will help writers solve problems and satisfy their duty of clear communication.

A common assumption about plain language is that it requires “dumbing down” material for readers to their disadvantage. But plain legal language researcher and advocate, Cheryl Stephens, knows that’s not true. Plain language is as clear, understandable, and simple as the situation allows and it is effective for its purpose.

Drawing on empathy and neuroscience research, Cheryl helps professionals and businesses understand why plain language is important and teaches them to create documents that readers will understand.

We spoke with Cheryl about misconceptions about plain language and the many approaches scientists use to predict whether a document is readable. In this interview, you’ll learn how readability and writeability work together and gain a framework for legal literacy. Read on for Cheryl’s lessons in plain language.

Communication has always been important, perhaps no more important than today given people’s short attention spans. Business communication is no exception. While press releases and newspaper advertisements were commonly employed for announcements, launches, new hires, and marketing advertisements, now businesses and individuals have numerous alternative platforms to disseminate ideas in writing and help attract clients. Platforms like blogs, websites, online journals, and social media have become indispensable for attracting clients and increasing revenue.

When it comes to writing, learning from others and then practicing what you have learned can be of immense help. In this interview, WordRake speaks with Adam Eckart, Assistant Professor of Legal Writing at Suffolk University Law School, who teaches legal writing and has written extensively on teaching writing to law students, including through using tech in both litigation and transactional settings.

“Trust me, I’m an expert.”

That declaration doesn’t get you far in today’s divided world, where many voices compete for attention and influence.

How can you write with authority and earn readers’ trust without falling back on the old “I’m an expert” line? It depends on who you are writing for.

Coaching helps improve performance. It hones talent, turns expectations into reality, and helps promising professionals realize their true potential. If you’re curious about how a business writing coach can help improve your writing, here’s what you need to know.

Writing can be a source of many things —of inspiration, of learning, or of meditation, for example. Writing is an iterative process, so whether you are hoping to be the next John Grisham or just want to blog, learning from others and then practicing what you have learned can be of immense help.

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.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” - Joan Didion, writer and journalist

Many dream of becoming a published author and turning writing into a full-time job. Others simply strive to capture their thoughts, experiences, and stories in writing to share with a few friends and family members. 

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.

As Gary Kinder wrote in The Perfect Brief Part 11 - Polishing Your Brief, you should never use tricks to squeeze a brief into a word or page limit. It’s unethical and judges will notice—they’ve seen every trick we can imagine.

For most lawyers and law firms, their business strategy is three words long: “Do good work.” The assumption is that individual effort and intelligence are all that it takes to succeed. If it were ever true, it isn’t anymore. Today there’s a breakdown in trust and an uptick in blame that’s getting in the way of “good work.”

Innovation is now becoming an annoying buzzword. Even for people inclined to embrace legal innovation, the word is now eliciting groans. And for people afraid of change, innovation is such a loaded word that even thinking about it is overwhelming.

There’s only one certainty: The legal industry is continuing to change. Everything else is uncertain. The question is whether lawyers will adjust enough to remain a valuable and well-compensated part of it.

The legal industry is overrun with counterintuitive and counterproductive expectations about innovation. The demands for radical innovation seem to grow louder every day. The more frustrated we are with the lack of progress, the more extreme we are with our demands. But here’s a simple question: is the purpose of innovation to show our CEOs and clients that we are exploring the latest fashionable technology? Or is the purpose of innovation to increase revenue, value, and client satisfaction?

What does it take to thrive in today’s knowledge economy? If you read commentary from the legal industry, the answer is clear: innovation. This buzzword is alluring because it’s amorphous, ambiguous, ill-defined, and unmeasured. We can reward ourselves for “doing something,” while doing nothing at all.  If we can’t agree on a definition or direction, we can continue talking without taking any action.

It may feel good to encourage spontaneity and creativity, but random acts of innovation don’t work on a large scale. To be successful, innovation must be strategically executed and aligned to business strategies.  However, most companies fail to unite innovation and strategic initiatives.  PwC surveyed 1,200 executives about managing innovation and found that 54% struggled to connect innovation and business strategy.

When it comes to efforts to improve legal service delivery, we tend to look outward. We consider how we should re-engineer processes; how we can better staff projects; and what technology we should use. We rarely stop to think about how we should improve ourselves.

Lawyers are struggling to embrace change and this is impeding innovation. Even for those who want to change, most efforts fail to deliver.  How can we put in so much effort for so little gain?  Maybe it’s because we’re not identifying the right problems to solve.

Our approach to technology and process improvement initiatives is often fueled by hope, driven by shame, and made urgent by fearful hype.

Despite the calls to innovate and excitement stemming from conferences, hack-a-thons, think-pieces, and podcasts, law firms aren’t actually innovating. As lawyers, we know that we need to change, but figuring out how and where to start is daunting. Frankly, we’re stuck. And we’re not helped by the hype and assertions that one single idea or one single piece of technology will be the panacea for our problems. The truth is that no one change or decision will be the right fit for every law firm or law department. Instead, what we need is a framework to determine the best direction for our individual circumstances. Workflow analysis can help.

Too many lawyers with great ideas that could improve legal practice are discouraged from even trying to innovate. As lawyers, we assume that innovation must mean invention, technology, and programming. By accepting that assumption, we are accepting the belief that innovation is something that other people do. But that’s not true. Innovation can be any new process or new way of thinking — and that can be game changing. Innovating is for lawyers, and lawyers already have the skills to be innovators. No coding necessary.

For our final installment on The Perfect Brief, we offer a list you can quickly peruse to ensure you have checked all of the elements in your brief to make it the most convincing document you can put before a judge.

Technologists seem mystified that lawyers don’t embrace efficiency-enhancing innovations. Despite our reluctance to face it, as lawyers, we need look no further than our rewards structure to see why. Billable hours reward inefficiency. And that rewards structure has remained in place with the help of ethical fading. We think that we’re simply using the existing business model for our benefit. We use our history and familiarity with the billable hour framework to ignore that our goals and our clients’ goals are at cross-purposes.

A polished document encourages a generous reading, so review to correct mistakes, shorten the brief, and generally make the judge’s job easier. Below are several ideas to ensure that what we send to the court is our best work and enhances our reputation with the judge.

One mistake, possibly more than any other, is the reason behind so many failed legal technology purchases. And law firm management and software vendors are equally to blame: they both treat the purchasing decision as the end goal. The result is a landscape littered with failed technology and innovation initiatives that is bad for management and vendors alike.

Over centuries, these false notions have grown to dominate a litigation practice and stuff our briefs with the results of unsavory habits. We aim to dispel them, so you can deliver to the court your most persuasive brief.

Whether you just returned from a two-week vacation or a two-day weekend, you probably logged on to your laptop to find a full inbox. Responding to email – and generating email for our own projects – consumes much of our workdays; we spend more than a quarter of our workweeks on email. If you’re overwhelmed by your inbox or just frustrated it’s preventing you from getting to other tasks, try these five strategies to clarify your emails and spend less time in your inbox.

It’s been nearly fifteen years since the financial crisis of 2008, yet the legal industry is still reeling from it. Lawyers felt the shift from seller’s market to buyer’s market, but we weren’t sure that it would be permanent and didn’t know how to respond. For technology enthusiasts, the answer seemed obvious: use more legal technology. That may be part of the solution (and I genuinely believe it is). However, the way technologists promote their tools is self-defeating. Early adopters encourage them, and together they create an echo chamber that is unattractive and unappealing to the vast majority of our profession.

When you craft tight and convincing paragraphs, you leave your opponent no room to break into the flow of your argument. This requires recognizing the specific roles played by facts and opinions and asking the right follow up questions to uncover weaknesses.

What gave you the idea for WordRake?

Although I have a law degree, I’ve devoted my career to writing and teaching writing. I’ve taught to businesses, universities, government agencies, and writing/publishing conferences. But most of my teaching was in the thousand-plus writing programs I taught to lawyers around the country. While I was teaching to lawyers, I noticed patterns in their writing, and I wondered if I could use those patterns to help them. After years of studying the patterns, I realized that a finite set of “signs” showed up consistently in words and phrases that added no meaning or formed a dull expression. And I saw that this was not peculiar to lawyers: these signs appeared in all writing. I analyzed the writing of the best writers, from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists, to writers in Esquire and Vanity Fair, to Supreme Court Justices. In about 2000, I wondered if I could work with software engineers to put these signs and patterns into algorithms. I was astounded to see how the signs and patterns so consistently hunted down useless words and dull phrases.

Legal writing can be a struggle because we’re expected to be fast and perfect. This creates a high-pressure situation where we’re sure to doubt ourselves. Fear, perfectionism, self-doubt, and external pressure are the main psychological ingredients for writer’s block. So how can we overcome writer’s block and get that first draft on paper?

In this series of infographics, we’re offering tips for writing clearly and concisely through WordRake Edits. Follow along as we offer these real edits from WordRake that give you concrete examples to improve your own writing.

Most people want to improve their writing—but they don’t want to expend any effort to do it. Luckily, there is a way improve writing without taking a class or doing practice exercises: reading. Lazy, yet hopeful writers can get better simply by reading more. The more you read, the better you’ll write. This is your permission to read and relax and call it work. It may be the motivation you need to read more.

Transition words are often a sign of disjointed and clunky writing. They’re attempts to create flow where none exists. Our impulse to insert overused and artificial transitions is no surprise: We learned to use them in grade school before we could recognize and reproduce higher elements of good writing. My English teachers loved transitions. I remember doing worksheets on them and writing papers where I was specifically instructed to use transitional words and phrases at the beginning of every sentence. If I did that now, my editors would ask if I was feeling okay.

To get a judge immersed in our story, we must capture the judge’s imagination. By using descriptive language that engages the senses, we invite a judge to experience our client’s plights from our client’s perspective.

In this series of infographics, we’re offering tips for writing clearly and concisely through WordRake Edits. Follow along as we offer these real edits from WordRake that give you concrete examples to improve your own writing.

In this series of infographics, we’re offering tips for writing clearly and concisely through WordRake Edits. Follow along as we offer these real edits from WordRake that give you concrete examples to improve your own writing.

Writing competitions don’t reflect sustainable writing habits, but they can teach great life lessons. So far, I’ve written a 55,000-word novel, participated in 10 writing competitions and challenges, and placed in several writing and editing competitions. I’m sure no talent scout or publisher will offer me an advance to write my memoir, but those experiences have taught me about community, time management, and perfectionism.

While “legalese” may be the punchline for jokes about bad writing, the problem isn’t confined to the legal profession. Bad business writing is widespread and costs American companies an estimated $1.2 trillion per year. That may be a conservative estimate: a 2023 survey estimates that ineffective communication is costing American businesses $2 trillion each year. Let’s look at how unsatisfactory writing has affected businesses and why we should improve our writing skills.

Stories take a judge to the heart of our dispute. They let the judge see our client’s plight, empathize with our client, and want to decide for our client. By telling a story, we say to the judge, “Your Honor, here is what this case is really all about.”

Editing is a difficult task with many interconnected pieces. It requires that we know and apply writing, grammar, and style principles to complex topics. And some writing professors have found that even if you have vast knowledge of grammar, syntax, and style, you’ll still need help to apply that knowledge and thoroughly edit a piece of writing. Otherwise, you’ll either get overwhelmed with too much information or you won’t be able to remember enough to put the rules into practice while editing.

In this legal writing edition of infographics, we’re offering tips that Judges Know. With years of education and professional experience, judges are a wealth of knowledge on legal writing. Follow along as we offer examples that Judges Know that you can apply to your own writing today.

Because presenting our work in a clear and pleasing manner is so important, effective legal writers devote 35% of their time in any legal writing task to revising, editing, proofreading, and otherwise polishing the document.

As a judge reads our facts, she will form an opinion. When she finishes, often she has already decided the case. She will appreciate our argument to help her frame her opinion, but what motivates her is the story we tell and how we tell it. She already knows what the law says; she doesn’t know the facts. If we properly develop and present those Facts, argument becomes almost unnecessary.

Editing is the process of improving content, clarity, structure, and substance. It involves checking the content of the text to ensure that the ideas are expressed clearly and logically, and form a coherent and meaningful whole. It should be the first task you undertake after you have a fairly complete document. (Save the proofreading for later.) The purpose of editing is to make your document better. Here’s what to check:

Writing relaxes me and provides an outlet to explore concepts and ideas. Without writing, those same ideas would distract me during meetings or conversations with friends. Writing makes me feel happy and keeps me sane, so I know I should do it regularly. But I’ve struggled for years to find adequate time to write. I finally succeeded when I developed an intentional writing practice.

In this legal writing edition of infographics, we’re offering tips that Judges Know. With years of education and professional experience, judges are a wealth of knowledge on legal writing. Follow along as we offer examples that Judges Know that you can apply to your own writing today.

The perfect brief requires keen investigation and shrewd fact-gathering. The better facts we gather, the better story we can tell the judge, and the more persuasive our brief. No brief can exceed the quality of its facts—so invest in finding the right facts. Unfortunately, in law school we learn to present facts like a news reporter, but not to find them like an investigative journalist. 

In this legal writing edition of infographics, we’re offering tips that Judges Know. With years of education and professional experience, judges are a wealth of knowledge on legal writing. Follow along as we offer examples that Judges Know that you can apply to your own writing today.

Before we write an introduction, we should think about its purpose and ask ourselves a question:

Do we even need an introduction?

In this 3-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 3 Secrets to Writing Bright & Lively Sentences. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

Judges, mediators, and other decision-makers live with major distractions. We need to capture their attention in the first sentence. Too often, we use that opening sentence—and sometimes several paragraphs—to overwhelm the judge with minutiae or to present the other side’s case.

As we discussed last time, the more we stay within the bounds of judicial decorum and decency, the more likely we are to prevail. If we let ethics guide our brief-writing, the system wins, the profession wins, society wins, and our client is more likely to win. If being respectful and diligent in our briefs had no upside, we could not in good faith recommend it; but beneath any discussion about how to write a brief lies a dependable truth: Our approaching brief-writing with “fairness” in mind is much better for our clients.

Carving two or three hours out of our meeting-filled, media-riddled day to focus on starting a memorandum is nearly impossible. But we can usually preserve pockets of 20 to 30 minutes. Don’t assume such a short chunk of time is worthless—21 minutes is all you need to get started. This article will help you quickly write a first draft that can become an impressive memo.

In a blog titled “Words That Can Ruin Your Sentence,” Dictionary.com calls the unnecessary words we speak “crutch words.” In a recent tweet headlined “Words de Doom,” Appellate Twitter calls unnecessary words we write “verbal tics.” Whatever we call them, we use unnecessary words for a reason: when speaking, it’s to give ourselves time to think about what we want to say next—so, well, actually—when writing, it’s usually because we don’t know they’re unnecessary.

In this 3-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 3 Secrets to Writing Bright & Lively Sentences. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

Today and each week for the next 12 weeks, the lawyers at WordRake will explore the most ubiquitous form of a law practice—brief-writing: from the ethics to the psychology, to introducing your case, gathering your facts, presenting the facts, building arguments, persuading judges, and proofreading to make your brief the best you can make it in the time you have. We will give you checklists and teach you techniques you can learn only at WordRake from lawyers who have taught tens of thousands of litigators how to win more cases; even how to get that first draft down in 21 minutes. Our goal is to make your professional life easier by helping you understand the whole process at a deeper level—what really moves a judge to say, “Yes.”

We sat down with the newest member of the WordRake team, Ivy B. Grey, after completing her first month on the job. Ivy joined us in early November as our Director of Business Strategy. A legal tech entrepreneur and former lawyer, Ivy brings a wealth of knowledge to the WordRake team, and we’re excited to sit down with her and hear her progress and vision for the future.

In this 3-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 3 Secrets to Writing Bright & Lively Sentences. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

Advice to improve your legal writing can sound flippant. How often have you heard “rules” like these?

The best way to build a strong resume is to update it regularly, not just when you’re looking for a new job. Whether you're applying for your first job or your fourteenth, we have nine tips to ensure your resume is updated, concise, and well-formatted.

The memorandum opening below was written by a partner at a big firm. It is filled with examples of two of the three categories of "memo language" we discussed last week. The two paragraphs total 155 words. Start by removing the "obvious" statements and the sentences used to "explain the organization." Then see if you can reduce what remains to about 30 words.

Last week, in Part 6 of the WordRake series How to Write the Perfect Memorandum, we explained how to keep clients happy by opening a substantive email with your conclusion and suggested action. In the short installment this week, we show how and why to remove the thick wads of "memo language" that prevent your reader from understanding the situation or knowing what to do about it.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

Last week, in Part 5 of the WordRake series How to Write the Perfect Memorandum, we looked at the Issue Memorandum, which considers the facts and the law in assessing a client's case. This week, we discuss how to introduce a substantive email to a client. 

In Part 4 of the WordRake series How to Write the Perfect Memorandum, we looked at the Advisory Memorandum, the backbone of a transactional practice. This week, we parse the most complex of memoranda—the Issue Memorandum, which assesses the strength of a client's case.

We've now discussed the writing assignment, compared the three primary memoranda, and explained the simplest of the three: the Survey. Today, we look at the memorandum you're more likely write in a transactional practice, the Advisory Memorandum.

We've now discussed how to accept a writing assignment from an assigning lawyer; and we've compared the three primary memoranda an assigning lawyer will ask you to write: the Survey, the Advisory Memorandum, and the Issue Memorandum. Today, we examine the shortest and simplest of the three, the Survey.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

Last week, we covered how to accept a writing assignment. Now we look at the three categories of memoranda written to partners.

In this seven-part series, the WordRake legal team explores the three categories of law office memoranda and how to write each to an assigning lawyer. We also reveal the secrets to introducing and streamlining client memoranda for a client’s quick understanding. From receiving the assignment to editing your final draft for brevity and clarity, you will learn how to create and organize memoranda that impress assigning lawyers and satisfy discerning clients.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

When I describe the distance between my apartment and WordRake’s office as “walkable,” people usually envision a fifteen- or twenty-minute walk. My next line is that my commute is an hour and just under four miles.

With the near ubiquity of spell-checkers across all platforms, many people no longer worry about correct spelling. Let the spell-checkers handle it! And they do—mostly. But spell-checkers don’t care about context; if we spell the word correctly, they’re happy. So, “I here you” has spell-checkers turning cartwheels.

According to Forbes, business professionals average 6.3 hours a day reading and responding to 123 emails. That’s a staggering amount of time and energy we could use on other projects. Most of us can’t get rid of email completely, but we can all lessen its monopoly on our work lives.

WordRake helps us write clearly and concisely, but removing useless words and phrases is only part of writing. These are our favorite pieces of software for brainstorming, researching, and drafting.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

I love editing. I used to edit instructors on an education website. I spent years proofreading and revising my peers’ work for student publications. In college, I volunteered to edit friends’ papers, resumes, and graduate school applications. Over the years, I noticed that many friends made the same punctuation mistakes. Microsoft’s recently released list of the errors people make most frequently while writing in Word includes several of the same errors. Here are three you can avoid.

Facing a blank page is like stage fright without seeing the audience—maybe the most intimidating experience we can have. It’s intimidating because someone will read whatever we put on that blank page, and they will pass judgment. We’re putting ourselves out there.

A few years ago, one of the WordRake founders was on a plane to Los Angeles, sitting next to a senior engineer at McDonnell Douglas. Their conversation turned to writing, and the engineer said that his primary mission was impressing upon new engineers its importance. “I tell them, but I don’t think they hear it. Then three years later they complain to me they’re not being promoted. I remind them that their writing skills are not good enough to move them into a managerial position. So they get stuck in their career because they can’t communicate with the written word.”

WordRake and McDonnell Douglas aren’t the only companies that need their engineers to know how to write. A National Association of Colleges and Employers survey found the ability to create and edit written reports is one of employers’ top ten criteria when hiring recent college graduates. Here are four reasons writing is critical for engineers.

Writing is the most important thing we do every day (at least in the office). But to write well, you must use your writing time efficiently. Managing your time helps you write faster and improve focus. Good time management can also help you reduce stress and make time for other to-do’s outside of writing.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is an annual sprint to write a 50,000-word novel in November. According to NaNoWriMo’s website, over 394,000 people tried to write 50,000 words in November 2017, and more than 58,000 succeeded. Victors claimed two valuable prizes: bragging rights and a great sense of accomplishment: writing 50,000 words in a month is no mean feat. That’s almost 1,700 words a day, or about six pages, every day, for a month. I managed it while I was in an honors program, volunteering, and involved in several extracurricular activities. Here’s how you can, too.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

Because we can’t use body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice to help us convey meaning, many of us struggle with written communication. Even without these in-person ways of communicating, we can convey an effective message in writing. Below, we discuss the most important aspects of written communication.

The demand for technical writers is strong. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that technical writer employment will grow by 7% over the next ten years. The demand is primarily driven by the need for companies to have properly documented policies and procedures. This is even more important for companies deeply involved with software, electronics, and other technology, which require easy-to-understand information for internal and external use.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

To achieve better outcomes and a higher return on investment, organizing purchases is key. A request for proposal (RFP) serves as the starting point for high-priced purchases, whether you’re an organization or part of the government sector.

Writer’s block is a familiar obstacle that seems to grow the more we focus on it. We know we must write, so we sit down at our desk, stare at our screens, and will ourselves to write something. Anything. Still, no words appear. The longer we sit there, frustrated that we’re not writing, the more likely it becomes that we will not write at all.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.