Legal Writing Programs
Tom’s writing programs teach advanced writing strategies and techniques to litigation and transactional attorneys.
Tom’s legal writing programs will enhance your attorneys’ writing and advocacy—no matter their existing skill levels or areas of practice. He teaches from principle, identifying specific reasons why his suggested approaches work and how your attorneys can apply those approaches in different contexts. His programs integrate many examples that illustrate how your attorneys can immediately incorporate the principles he teaches into their writing. He also provides excellent teaching materials, annotated writing samples, and handouts, so your attorneys have practical takeaway materials they can refer to in their future work.
Tom offers many standard writing programs that get results. But he will tailor his programs to provide the specific instruction you want. Tom’s litigation programs focus primarily on motion practice. Many legal writing consultants discuss appellate writing even though relatively few attorneys have appellate practices. Instead, Tom drills down to the persuasive writing skills that litigators need most to win. In his business programs, Tom focuses on writing transactional documents in plain English. He also discusses writing the following: 1) advocacy pieces to administrative agencies; 2) internal memoranda and emails; and 3) client-facing memoranda and emails.
Tom’s programs give attorneys immediate and detailed feedback on their writing.
Tom assigns interactive writing exercises in all but his shortest programs. These exercises ensure that your attorneys will engage more, learn actively, and immediately apply what they have learned. To provide even more personalized instruction, Tom creates these exercises using anonymous writing samples from your attorneys’ briefs, transactional agreements, and other work product because attorneys tend to engage more with work that they and their colleagues have written. Your attorneys will also learn more because they get to see concrete examples of how their colleagues’ work—and their own—can improve.
Tom skillfully moderates group discussions of these exercises to give your attorneys immediate feedback. Your attorneys will not only learn from Tom but also from each other. Tom does not discount ideas because they differ from his own. Instead, he embraces participants’ ideas, using them to build deeper discussions.
Tom also revises the writing samples in the exercises he assigns. And he provides detailed annotations for the original and revised versions of these samples to illustrate his teaching points and give your attorneys even more helpful takeaway materials.
Tom’s teaching engages and entertains, creating an enjoyable and productive learning environment.
Tom teaches with humor, patience, and passion, creating a comfortable, enjoyable, and productive learning experience. And he uses clinical teaching methods to ensure that your attorneys will retain and apply what they learned.
Tom has taught writing programs for many AmLaw 200 law firms and other elite clients, including the following representative clients.
- Baker & Hostetler LLP
- Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP
- Fredrikson & Byron P.A.
- Hyundai Capital America
- Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles
- Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP
- National Bar Association, Associate Advancement Academy for Excellence
- Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
- Southern California Edison
- State of California Department of Industrial Relations
Writing Programs for your litigation attorneys.
Tom teaches all aspects of written advocacy in his litigation programs, including how to do the following:
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- Write concise, direct sentences.
- Embrace active voice: state concrete nouns and punchy verbs.
- State verbs as verbs—not nouns like nominalizations and gerunds.
- Stop defaulting to weak “to be” verbs, including passive verbs.
- Use passive voice strategically.
- Eliminate excess words and redundant sentences.
- Transition skillfully to demonstrate connections between ideas and emphasize favorable points.
- Vary sentence length and structure to grab and hold readers’ attention.
- Punctuate creatively to highlight facts and ideas.
- Paragraph consistently and often.
- Edit exhaustively.
- Proofread proficiently.
Writing Programs for your transactional attorneys.
Tom teaches transactional attorneys transferable writing techniques and other lawyering skills that help your attorneys do the following:
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- Write concise, direct sentences.
- Write clear contract terms.
- Embrace active voice: state concrete nouns and short, punchy verbs to highlight parties’ rights and obligations.
- State verbs as verbs—not as nouns like nominalizations and gerunds.
- Stop defaulting to weak “to be” verbs, including passive verbs.
- Use passive voice strategically to minimize clients’ obligations or give them more maneuverability within the agreement.
- Transition seamlessly to do the following: 1) demonstrate relationships between contractual terms; 2) state conditions to those terms; and 3) emphasize important terms.
- Tabulate lists.
- Avoid writing techniques that present contract terms as inessential information.
- Eliminate parenthetical information that obscures essential terms.
- Eliminate excess words and redundant sentences.
- Eliminate stuffy, antiquated language, including Latin and Middle English words.
- Edit exhaustively.
- Proofread proficiently.
Transition to Practice writing programs for your summer associates and new attorneys.
Tom also offers specialized “transition to practice” writing programs for summer associates and new attorneys to help them evolve from academic legal writing to practice-oriented legal writing. Because of his extensive teaching background, Tom understands the typical strengths and weaknesses of legal writing programs at many highly-ranked law schools.
Tom’s programs will strengthen your new attorneys’ writing skills in areas where they may not have received sufficient instruction and practice during law school. These programs also help new attorneys abandon writing practices that — while perhaps relevant to writing academic papers and law review articles — undermine their written advocacy.
Critiquing methods programs for your supervising attorneys.
Tom teaches effective critiquing methods to help partners and other supervising attorneys ensure their critiques improve their attorneys’ future work. These programs provide detailed instruction on techniques that help supervisors do the following: 1) provide constructive written feedback; 2) critique efficiently; 3) provide constructive verbal feedback; and 4) ensure that their attorneys learn from their feedback.
For longer sessions, Tom provides critiquing exercises so your attorneys can practice their critiquing methods and receive immediate feedback. He also offers a role-play exercise so your attorneys can practice providing verbal feedback.
Writing programs for your or your clients’ human resources personnel.
Human resources personnel perform many tasks that compare to the tasks lawyers perform. So they need training like the training lawyers receive. Tom’s programs help human resources personnel do the following in their work:
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- Write short, clear sentences.
- Transition skillfully to demonstrate connections between ideas and emphasize favorable points.
- Paragraph frequently, using meaningful thesis sentences.
As he does in his legal writing programs, Tom assigns interactive writing exercises to ensure that your human resources personnel engage more, learn actively, and immediately apply what they have learned. He develops these exercises from their own work product. Thus, these personnel can apply what they learn in the context of their own forms and templates. Tom also revises the writing samples in the exercises he assigns. These revisions include detailed annotations for the original and revised versions of these samples that illustrate his teaching points and give your human resources personnel even more helpful takeaway materials.
Writing programs for staff.
Several of Tom’s clients have had their staff attend Tom’s programs that teach persuasive writing techniques. But Tom also provides simplified writing programs that will teach your staff foundational writing techniques that they can apply in their written work.