Introduction

This book is intended to help law students to develop their writing skills. Writing clearly and effectively is a vital legal skill. Lawyers use this skill daily. Law graduates need, therefore, to have a solid competency in clear and effective writing. Even if you do not become a lawyer or do not want to become a lawyer, the skill of writing is still a valuable asset in many professions and types of work.

Unfortunately, many students enter law school with notable weaknesses in this area. Indeed, for many students, poor writing is the main problem holding them back from attaining higher grades. The good news is that, with effort and practice, virtually everyone can improve their writing. If you invest time in working on improving your writing, it will repay you.

There are certainly other skills that law students need to develop, but writing well remains at the core. Law students who develop good writing skills early in their law studies – and continue to hone them throughout their course – will be laying a valuable foundation for their legal careers.

This book aims to help students improve their writing by presenting various pieces of advice, tips, warnings and encouragement. Once you master the basic ideas behind clear writing, you will know when and how to adapt them and even diverge from them when appropriate. Of course, this guide is not only for students experiencing difficulty in communicating effectively. Those who already write well will find ideas here that will help them become even better writers.

Legal writing is infamous for its frequently complex sentence structure and obscure vocabulary. Unfortunately, many students seem to feel that they must emulate this if they are to ‘sound like a lawyer’. This is not true. Good legal writing is clear and effective, rather than ostentatious or rhetorical. Since the 1970s, the legal profession has made a concerted effort to promote the use of plain English in legal writing.

In 1987, the Law Reform Commission of Victoria (as it was then called) published its report Plain English and the Law. The Commission gave this succinct overview of ‘Plain English’:

‘Plain English’ involves the use of plain, straightforward language which … conveys its meaning as clearly and simply as possible, without unnecessary pretension or embellishment. It is to be contrasted with convoluted, repetitive and prolix language. The adoption of a plain English style demands simply that a document be written in a style which readily conveys its message to its audience. However, plain English is not concerned simply with the forms of language. Because its theme is communication, it calls for improvements in the organisation of the material and the method by which it is presented. It requires that material is presented in a sequence which the audience would expect and which helps the audience absorb the information.^[1]

It would be a mistake, however, to think that plain English writing will solve all problems. As Justice Tadgell, of the Supreme Court of Victoria, once observed, ‘Plain English alone achieves nothing. To be useful it must run in tandem with clear thought.’^[2] Good legal writing, then, aims to be clear in both expression and thought. This not only helps the legal writer to meet the needs of their audience; it also helps the legal writer to achieve their own purpose in writing to that audience.

The first four chapters of this book give general advice on writing in law school, and then chapters 5 through to 8 provide advice on specific kinds of writing tasks that you will be asked to perform in law school.

Chapter 1 gives some general advice on what you need to know before you start writing: who you are, who your audience is, what your subject matter is, and what your task is. It is vital to understand these four things to deliver what your writing task requires.

Chapter 2 discusses the importance of planning your document. Many students produce weak documents, or cause themselves unnecessary delays, because of a failure to plan.

Chapter 3 provides practical advice about the task of writing itself. Sentences are the building blocks of all written documents, and this chapter gives advice on how to construct clear and connected sentences. It also stresses the importance of reviewing and revising your document as part of the writing process.

Chapter 4 provides guidance on how to reference your work properly and avoid plagiarism. This is an essential part of maintaining academic integrity in your work.

Chapter 5 provides a guide to writing case briefs. Case briefs are a kind of expository or informative writing. Such writing seeks primarily to inform its audience about something, neutrally and objectively. In case briefs, the task is to summarise the key elements of a legal case so that the audience can understand its basic legal significance.

Chapter 6 focuses on legal problem-solving, which is where you are asked to apply the law to a given set of facts to work out the legal position of one or more of the people appearing in the scenario. This is perhaps the most common type of written task you will perform in law school. It usually constitutes the major part of the assessment in ‘black-letter law’ subjects, such as criminal law, torts and contracts.

Chapter 7 provides advice on writing essays, another very common form of assessment in law school. Essays usually require you to present a persuasive argument in favour of a position, not simply inform your audience about some facts.

Chapter 8 looks briefly at law reform submissions. You may sometimes be asked in law school to write a law reform submission. This is a submission to an inquiry or law reform body in which you present recommendations for how and why the law should change or indeed remain unchanged. This writing task is very similar to writing an essay, but it has a more specific focus and is more readily aligned with what you will encounter in the real world outside the academy.