6 Hacks to Crush Anxiety in Legal Writing

Julie Schrager, Legal Writing Coach and Advisor, Faegre Drinker

Summer associates and newer lawyers can relate to this situation:  your supervisor hands you a writing assignment, and you face a deadline that’s a week or so away.  At the moment the deadline feels remote.  But you know that legal writing takes a lot longer than any writing you’ve done before and that you should get started now.  But you can’t.  Why is that?  

Maybe you convince yourself that it’s because you’re busy with other work.  That may be true, but there may be another reason for your delay.  That reason is anxiety.    

Many of us postpone writing because we feel stuck and can’t get our minds settled down to write.  We call it writer’s block, but maybe it’s “I can’t get started because I don’t completely understand the assignment.”  Or “whatever I write won’t be good because I’m not as smart as everyone else here.”

I witness this anxiety in law students and newer associates who are eager for tools to combat it.  Here are a few writing hacks that legal writers might use to help them move forward with their written work while living with any feelings of anxiety.  One caveat:  these suggestions do not substitute for professional mental health treatment, but hopefully you can use them to make the writing process less painful and more productive.

Getting Started 

1. Start with easy projects so that you have an early sense of achievement.  Format the document.  Write the facts section.  Write out your conclusion.  Then sort your research by issues so that writing will be an easier process—notecards (virtual or real) like you used in law school are still effective tools.

2. Organize -- tell yourself that you’re not writing but that you’re setting things up for a time when you’re ready to write.  All legal writing requires organization and specifically headings or topic sentences.  Think about the points you are making.  Write out a heading for each one.  When you start this way, you’ll be able to see writing as “filling in the blanks” after the headings or topic sentences, rather than embarking on an overwhelming task.

   Revising

3. Anxiety increases when you’re tired.  That makes editing hard because you worry that you won’t make the right decisions.  Follow good habits that will help you sleep and aim for a good night’s rest between drafting and editing.

4. The most difficult part of editing is the big-picture part:  thinking hard about whether your document serves its purpose—does it answer the questions?  Does it marshal the best points?  Is the tone right for your audience?  Take on this big-picture editing task in a peaceful and comfortable place.

5. When you edit, trick your brain into looking critically at your document by changing up where you work and what you see:  write in your living room and edit at Starbucks.  Write in Times New Roman and edit in your favorite font or by making the type bigger or smaller.  

6. Employ concrete editing tools that make the revision process a game.  My current favorite:  look at the subjects of your sentences.  That’s what comes before the verb.  Make sure all of your subjects are short and concrete:  the person or thing doing the acting.  Another editing hack:  count the words in sentences (Word will do this for you).  Aim for fewer than 30 words per sentence and write even shorter sentences for complicated points and at the start of paragraphs.

I close with an important learning concept.  Your writing is not you and does not reflect on your worth as a human being.  Rather, legal writing is a teachable skill that you can develop with time and practice.   

Further, smart practice will both improve your writing and help decrease the anxiety that interferes with it.  Keep repeating one prolific author’s line to yourself:

“If I write one story, it might be awful, but if I write 100, the odds are in my favor.”