Legal Research Final Project
Legal Writing
Arisleyda Bonetti
Kaplan University
CM107
Legal Writing Perfecting legal writing will help create a better understanding of the law and to become a good lawyer. A good lawyer is considered one that can win a case without working as hard as their counterpart in the courtroom. Legal writing is found to be the best way a person presenting a case accomplishes a resolution in the writers favor. The legal writing process has some basic principles that a person has to fallow. The person that perfects legal writing has the ability to become a great lawyer. Most legal writing exists for one or more of these reasons, to explain, to persuade, to memorialize. In legal writing, the goal is not just to explain or persuade about the law. Instead, you are writing to real readers, readers who need your writing, analysis, arguments, citations, conclusions, and insights in order to do their jobs. The legal writer role is to become the expert on a given case. Careful study of the facts and research, the writer will be the one who knows what law is the controlling law and which cases are the key cases. In addition, after reading the arguments set out in the cases and the courts’ evaluation of those arguments, the writer will be the one who is in the best position to predict what each side will argue and how the court will view those arguments. New law students find the legal writer’s role a bit intimidating. It can be hard enough to be confident that the writer has found the right law and key cases without trying to create brand new, never seen before argument, or worse, predicting what a court will do or convincing a court what it should do. Many of the arguments will be variations of one of the cases that have been tried in the past, and legal writing is exactly the skill use to learn and and practice these skills. Every piece of writing you create in your role as a lawyer reflects on their professionalism. Words are the tools of the trade, so how you
Arisleyda Bonetti
Kaplan University
CM107
Legal Writing Perfecting legal writing will help create a better understanding of the law and to become a good lawyer. A good lawyer is considered one that can win a case without working as hard as their counterpart in the courtroom. Legal writing is found to be the best way a person presenting a case accomplishes a resolution in the writers favor. The legal writing process has some basic principles that a person has to fallow. The person that perfects legal writing has the ability to become a great lawyer. Most legal writing exists for one or more of these reasons, to explain, to persuade, to memorialize. In legal writing, the goal is not just to explain or persuade about the law. Instead, you are writing to real readers, readers who need your writing, analysis, arguments, citations, conclusions, and insights in order to do their jobs. The legal writer role is to become the expert on a given case. Careful study of the facts and research, the writer will be the one who knows what law is the controlling law and which cases are the key cases. In addition, after reading the arguments set out in the cases and the courts’ evaluation of those arguments, the writer will be the one who is in the best position to predict what each side will argue and how the court will view those arguments. New law students find the legal writer’s role a bit intimidating. It can be hard enough to be confident that the writer has found the right law and key cases without trying to create brand new, never seen before argument, or worse, predicting what a court will do or convincing a court what it should do. Many of the arguments will be variations of one of the cases that have been tried in the past, and legal writing is exactly the skill use to learn and and practice these skills. Every piece of writing you create in your role as a lawyer reflects on their professionalism. Words are the tools of the trade, so how you