Best legal education writing books according to redditors

You're going to kick yourself.

I also recommend Plain English for Lawyers.

Many reasons. Another side to this is people don't think they can make it on, so it's not worth the effort. Especially after 1L, many students realize (1) doing well in law school is far from straightforward, and (2) they aren't as smart as they thought they were.

LR itself is a thankless part-time job that doesn't pay you, and the write-on is daunting esp right after exams (but there's no good time to do a write-on, it's always all-consuming and in the way). Students also figure that they don't need law review to get to where they want to go, and they're mostly right. I know tons who didn't do it and got into elite firms, but I was at a T10 and these were people with extremely good GPAs anyway/order of the coif.

However, LR is helpful for separation between people with similar grades as you though, so for average students like me, it was totally worth it. I think it is always, always worth trying - you always have the option of saying no if you make it on.

Plug: FWIW I wrote a short ebook guide to write-ons that might help you/others here as well. It's free if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber or a Prime member who can use your 1-free-ebook-a-month credit. Otherwise it's only $5. Hacking Law Review: The Concise Guide to Write-Ons https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CM7S8NC
Just FYI, I transferred between two T10 law schools but successfully wrote-on to both law reviews in the process of transferring.

Experience doesn't necessarily make him a great writer. Still, don't let him bring you down or demoralize you. Especially since you're trying to improve your writing. It sounds like a normal control thing; in my experience, lawyers rewrite things for no reason except that it's what they learned in law school or it's just what's worked for them in the past. And lawyers hate changing their writing style—since Bryan Garner's tips from TWB are the "new" style that most practicing lawyers don't really care for, he may disagree with some of it. Ask him for recommended reading and see what he says. (I had a similar experience and I can understand how it's incredibly frustrating.)

But in the short term:

1. Keep in mind that random briefs (on random topics) for one attorney during one summer don't reflect your entire writing ability. Nor is his judgment of your writing necessarily accurate. If you can, ask someone else (friend/atty not at the office) to look at a copy of an early draft that you think is good and see what they say.
   
   
2. Figure out however he wants you to write, in whatever format, and stick to it. Don't bother trying to change his mind. (Sounds obvious, I know, but the point is that you can write how he wants you to at work, and develop your own style on your own.)
   
   Long term, I recommend these for improving brief-writing skills:
   
   
3. The best book on brief writing is Winning on Appeal by Ruggero Aldisert--a fed app judge
   
   
4. For some of the best examples, read the Solicitor General's briefs that are all available online
   
   
5. I found the no-longer-secret Supreme Court Style Guide to be helpful and interesting
   
   
6. Also, not super helpful, but interesting is the OSG Citation Manual
   
   
7. Another good resource is The Art of Advocacy
   
   
8. And Plain English for Lawyers
   
   Good luck!

I am sorry I cannot help you more. But, just as a heads up the idea of "legal speak" is being pushed out of the legal industry. The book Plain English for Lawyers could help your writing potentially if that is something you are wanting to improve. Legal writing is less about using terms such as "henceforth, therefore, notwithstanding, etc." and more focused on being concise and clear in your writing. Best of luck to you.

Great answer. Read some Hemingway. Short direct sentences.
"For sale, baby shoes, never worn."

Get Volokh's book on legal writing. It won't make you quicker, but might increase your confidence.

https://www.amazon.com/Academic-Legal-Writing-andGetting-University/dp/1599417502

Going to go against the grain here. Everyone is right that burnout and memorizing this early won't help you that much. But there is one thing you can do that is completely unrelated to burnout/memorization:

Performance tests

Performance test are supposed to test what you learned about lawyering in school without any specific class in mind (legal writing I guess). But even performance tests require a strategy and practice applying that strategy, especially if your time in law school or internships didn't involve a lot of writing.

Depending on jx, the PTs can really screw you if you don't take them seriously. I think people have a tendency to neglect PT prep during bar prep since there is so much nervousness about memorizing substantive law. This is a mistake. However, because you aren't trying to cram - you can effectively do this part of your preparation before actual bar prep, and then you are free to focus prep time on MBE and essays.

My school offered a class during the semester that was solely for MPT preparation. We learned strats and did practice PTs for a few months before official bar prep started. Effectively this allowed me to ignore the PT portion of bar prep (other than submitting the two barbri graded PTs).

http://www.amazon.com/Perform-Your-Best-Exam-Performance/dp/0970608837

This was the book we used. I'd highly recommend picking it up and going through it on your weekends. Even if your state doesn't do MPT, the strategies are still highly applicable (I did the 3-hour california PTs) and its a good starting point to developing a strategy that works for you. Just doing a few sample PTs and trying to blindly wing the PTs without an attack strategy is a huge mistake.

I'd agree with others to steer clear of any intense memorization, but it probably wouldn't hurt to watch review lectures of MPT subjects just to refresh. If you can get your hands on outlines, maybe even just gloss over the basics for subjects you didn't take a class on during school so that you won't be spending a ton of time trying to learn completely new doctrines.

Plain English for Lawyers is a great book and pushes us in the right direction. Not for simplicity's sake, but because being understood and persuasive require clear meaning.

Law School Confidential: A Complete Guide to the Law School Experience: By Students, for Students https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312605110/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_lpqnDbRQRCCFB

Writing Essay Exams To Succeed in Law School: Not Just Survive, Fourth Edition (Academic Success) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1454841621/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XpqnDb593S6GG

1l of a Ride: A Well-traveled Professor's Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School (Career Guides) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1634607899/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_qqqnDbW2K5BJC

Two general/background books I've found valuable that will at least get you asking the right (directed) questions are:

• Pretrial Litigation
  
  
• Writing for Litigation
  
  Hope this helps.

https://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Writes-Practical-Guide-Analysis/dp/1531008763/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=a+lawyer+writes&qid=1572288404&sr=8-3

good examples in this book.

If you're working on a note/comment, you should have a Notes & Comments editor and/or advisor to help. I also found [this book] (https://www.amazon.com/Scholarly-Students-Competition-American-Casebook/dp/0314207201) helpful. Generally, having a thorough paper outline is essential.

That was a funny solution a Cracked writer proposed to the whole debate, to free multiplayer games from singleplayer games so they can quit hassling each other. It solves some problems, creates others.

Technically my reading list moved away from game academia a while ago. I'm just a hobby writer, I don't worry about the same issues they do. I was a game critic for 3 years at Popmatters while I was in law school and I steadily got more interested in rule theory. That's most of what I do now in my writing.

I don't really know where someone could start with that...probably by studying systems. This is an outstanding intro book for it. Something bit more sophisticated on rule systems would be this one on how they are presented

I can start rattling off the legal philosophers but they are such boring old farts...Greg Lastowka wrote what is probably the best book on game design and law.

Like most of us, I struggled with transitioning from non-legal, academic writing to legal writing. This book definitely helped me become a much better legal writer and I feel will assist you here. I refer to it regularly and it will be the first book to go in my office this fall (Appellate Practice).

>The ideas she gave including manipulating our facts so our case could apply to strong caselaw.

While other responses here are correct in that some feedback from professors is definitely stylistic and shouldn't be treated like objective truth, it sounds like your analysis lacks advocacy which does require some creativity. Being able to concede a "bad fact" but place it in a context supporting your legal point is a skill which will strengthen your overall brief.

This is all I read, easy read and gives you a good idea of the process.

Everyone else recommends Volkoh, but I barely cracked the cover though.

> I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious, but aren't we supposed to be a little pretentious as lawyers? Isn't that just assumed with the territory?

No, use plain english as much as possible, unless a term of art is unavoidable. Didn't they cover this in your legal writing class?

Check out Plain English for Lawyers by Richard C. Wydick.

THIS helped me tremendously. It's super short and super useful. I recommend it.

Two books I can suggest:

1. Wydick, Plain English for Lawyers
   
2. Kuney & Looper, Mastering Legal Analysis and Drafting

I highly recommend Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation's Top Advocates for law students and new attorneys. My briefs are objectively better because of this book. Cheers!

I have a copy of Errors, Medicine and the Law which strangely enough has only chapter and subchapter titles printed—the pages are otherwise blank. One page will say Guilt at the top. A few pages later, Shame. I've always intended to write that book as I saw fit.

http://www.amazon.com/Academic-Legal-Writing-andGetting-University/dp/1599417502

Same in my Appellate Advocacy class (though there is a newer edition out).

Although the book is aimed at lawyers, it should help accountants as well. It helps the writer to stop using wordy phrases that professionals tend to use.

http://www.amazon.com/Plain-English-Lawyers-Richard-Wydick/dp/1594601518

Here's a great textbook on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Legal-Writing-Workshop-Better-Case/dp/1450511430

If you want REAL law school advice, check out "Straight A student's guide to law school" on amazon.com. Link below:

https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Students-Guide-School-Unconventional/dp/1071083058/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=straight+a+student%27s+guide+to+law+school&qid=1570569963&sr=8-2

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When you're done, I used the second book entitled "Law school exams: secrets of straight A students" and got As. Best year of my life. Worth it.

Link here: https://www.amazon.com/Law-School-Exams-straight-students/dp/1087415713/ref=sr_1_1?crid=32KABFBP6CICL&keywords=law+school+exams+secrets+of+straight+a+students&qid=1570570039&sprefix=law+school+exams%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-1

Still a great book

> And if I can follow your line of reasoning, you are implying that as soon as some person, however loosely linked they may be to the Tea Party, kills someone, then it is ok to hold a person like Nicholson accountable for his freedom of speech by merely killing him without affording him due process of law. Is that really what you are asserting?

I asserted in few, plain words exactly what I meant. No need to get dramatic or technical to ignore Greenwald's assertion.

> Is that really what you are asserting?

I'm not offering any arguments about the constitutionality of anything. I'm just saying it's silly for Greenwald to equate someone who has no connection to any violence with another who has a much, much stronger connection to violence.

Wanna make a deal? I'll re-read the Eisentrager line of cases if you do the exercises in this book: Plain English for Lawyers

The Legal Writing Handbook

I agree with bl1y.

I'm 3 years practicing with my second law review article getting published in around a month.

My first article topic came by looking at what I experienced as a practitioner every day. Pretty soon I got a feeling that maybe the courts were not applying a rule the way I perceived it should be applied. So, I looked into different cases where I thought the rule was inconsistent or at least not reconcilable. Turns out, there were a bunch.

My second article topic came from regularly reading decisions from the top court in my state. While doing that, I was not looking for a topic, but I did notice a pattern of things that generated dissents or concurrences. The judges almost had a funny way of discussing this topic and it caught my eye. It never occurred to me when reading that this was an article waiting to be written. Instead, it was only after about a year or so of reading cases that the topic gelled as article-worthy when someone asked if I would be interested in writing an article and they were looking for topics. It turned into a ~30-page law review article exploring the topic, history, and those recent decisions.

Not sure if your girlfriend was part of an academic journal in law school, but the idea is the same: anyone can write a case study. Rather, it is the synthesis of various cases and legal rules that adds meaning and broadens literature.

I want to say that I did all my research before I wrote a page. The truth is that writing itself is an organic process. You often need to start a little bit of writing to find more relevant literature.

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For me, the idea of finding a topic is like nucleation sites for crystals. For example, see this video of supercooled water. The idea of supercooled water and "instant" ice is that the water is cold enough to be ice, but it needs a place to start. Once it starts, however, the entire bottle of water changes phase. So, you could be ready to write an article, but you still need that spark, the place to start and to build from. That can come from (like the video shows) outside agitation (or impurities but lets not get to heavy into the science).


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Eugene Volokh has a book called Academic Legal Writing. I found it particularly helpful during law school and still to this day. But I remember it being cheaper back then. In any event, it covers issues from the genesis of ideas to the methodology of good research to better writing.

1. Python Programming - An Introduction to Computer Science
   
2. The Film Experience: An Introduction
   
3. Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing: Structure, Strategy and Style
   
4. On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals
   
5. Integrated Chinese Level 1 Pt. 1, 2nd Ed. Textbook: Simplified Character Edition
   

Haha the way you write is how they specifically train us not to write in law school because it's not plain enough. This might be a useful book even for non-lawyers to make their writing simpler and more sophisticated: http://www.amazon.com/Plain-English-Lawyers-5th-Edition/dp/1594601518