Across all industries and applications, effective writing shares key commonalities like clarity and connection. Writers seek to share powerful insights with audiences but can only do so by fully ...

Prepare an outline or overview of the document before beginning to draft, laying out all key points and arguments. If analyzing caselaw, consider: preparing a table of cases, summarizing each case’s ...

Good legal writing is a lot more than simply getting the law right. The year 2025 has been a very busy one for me in terms of drafting legal briefs on some issue or another. This means that not only ...

Persuasive writing is fundamental to the successful practice of law. But a brief must be readable before it can be persuasive, and an inherent tension exists between readability and the need to ...

The Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of its groundbreaking journal and recognized Professor Michael R. Smith as a prime architect of its creation.

In an era dominated by digital communication, the simple thank you note often feels like a relic from the past. Yet, in the legal profession — a field built on relationships, trust, and reputation — ...