Reflective Essay: Preparing The Writing Process

Like you I also had a deceit amount of writing experience coming into law school, in addition to writing a senior thesis in undergraduate. I also am not a big editor. Like Elaine, I rarely if ever edited my papers before handing them in (of course I edited my thesis). Because I never received below a B on my papers and received good feedback, I felt it was unnecessary to do any extra work. Now, I clearly see how flawed this reasoning is. As I mentioned in another response post, because I do not like to edit, I tend to start early in drafting my work and take ample breaks in between edits (a day or so). I also have trouble writing outlines. Although I would argue that it is not necessary to outline for all writing, it is a helpful and necessary
step when it comes to legal writing. I start by formulating a chart of the cases (visualization) and then putting them in outline form. Although a composed outlines before, I honestly did not start using them a critical tool in legal writing until this semester. The outline was very useful with memo 3. I can relate to writing or answering the wrong questions in the memo. I find that when I write without thinking about what facts and cases go to together, despite individual sentences making sense, paragraphs and thoughts become unclear. Outlining helps to keep you focused on the question you are trying to answer. Because I also do not have patience, my biggest suggestion is to start early so that you won't get bored, have plenty of time for questions, and ample time for editing.