Laura Bergus

I thought I knew how to write. I excelled in English classes. I got a liberal arts education. Professionally, I cranked out press releases and honed online copy every day. I wrote scripts for  TV and blog posts* for my ego. I thought I knew what I was doing.

Unfortunately, I tried to apply those make-’em-think-this-is-exciting writing skills to law school. Big mistake.

First, good academic writing is not good legal writing. Second, good writing in every other context is not good legal writing. Legal writing makes you do things like label sentences that would otherwise flow just fine from one to the next with “First,” and “Second.” Legal writing wants you to use serial commas. Legal writing puts spaces between the periods in ellipses. Legal writing forces the writer to break down every possible leap of logic or twist of mystery you might hope to leave between the lines and forces them into cold, black text. Text interrupted by citations. Text with endless footnotes. Text in short sentences. Text that is redundant. Text that never varies in form. Text that is repetitious.

My current bitterness has everything nothing to do with the fact that I’m eyeballs-deep in a paper that already has 10 pages of single-spaced 10-point endnotes, all in sparkling Bluebook format. Right about now I just want to take IRAC and CRAC by the serifs and shake them until their silly, rigid bodies fall apart.

But I guess I’ll go work on my paper.

* Now that you know how much I love legal writing, you should check out my Lawyerist post on the pros and cons of writing for a law school journal.