Document creation consumes a significant portion of every lawyer’s time regardless of practice area—up to 60% of lawyer time is spent drafting documents. And lawyers spend an additional 10 hours per week revising, editing, polishing, and proofreading. But despite this effort, according to Lexis Nexis, 90% of all legal documents still contain errors regardless of whether they were proofread.

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

Writing is not a linear process with a specific set of tools that a writer must use to succeed. For many, it’s a messy, disjointed puzzle where the missing pieces are not found until the very end of the process.

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.

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.”

Selecting potential schools, taking standardized tests, and securing letters of recommendation stress out students and professionals applying for college, fellowships, and graduate school; but more than any other part of the application process, many fear writing their personal statement. And with good reason: competitive programs look to personal statements to distinguish between otherwise similar applicants. You can prepare your best personal statement with these tips:

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.