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Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney and where we make the practice of law fun. Now today we’re going to talk about tailoring your legal documents for different audiences.
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Today, in order to help your overall use of the success cycle as far as the performing legal services portion goes, we’re going to take a look at tailoring your legal documents for different audiences. As I’m sure you already know, not all audiences are created equal.
For you to communicate as clearly as possible, part of your writing process needs to consider the audience. And in the legal world, an audience is not an audience is not an audience. Sure, there are generalized communications that everyone’s going to need to have, such as the date and time of an event.
But stylistically speaking, some audiences are going to want information presented to them one way, while other audiences are going to want information presented another way. It’s your job to [00:02:00] figure out which type to use . The important thing is simply to know who you’re talking to and to understand that there are different styles of communication. That alone is going to go a long way to inform and improve the quality of your legal work. After you know who is going to read your material, you can make changes to the tone, the length, and the level of detail to ensure effective communication with your target audience. So with that in mind, let’s consider our different audiences and what you might want to consider when you’re writing to judges, clients, and senior attorneys or colleagues. Judges tend to be focused and often prefer concise, direct, and to the point writing. That means they tend to prefer summaries that get straight into the legal argument.
If you’re writing a document that’s going to be seen by a judge, you probably want to avoid unnecessary detail or even emotional language.
Focus on facts and the legal precedence. you probably want to With judges, you want to be [00:03:00] direct to avoid creating any confusion. there’s a great bumper sticker that applies to the way you want to write to judges, which is Eschew obfuscation. Eschew obfuscation. I love the irony in that bumper sticker, and hopefully it’ll help you remember how to write when your audience is a judge.
Eschew obfuscation. Clients, on the other hand, tend to want to read communications in clear, plain, common, jargon free language that explains legal terms and processes. Clients also want to know the impact of the legal work on their case. So you want to remember that clients are always determining if the money that they’re paying for legal services is a good investment or not.
They’re asking themselves, are they spending their money wisely? If you use language that’s unclear or it’s bogged down with legal terms, then your client may become confused or even frustrated. So you want your client to be able to see how the legal work that you’re doing for them helps [00:04:00] them reach their legal goals.
As an aside, you want to make sure that all of your billing entries are also written in the same style that’s clear, transparent, and understandable in order to avoid any confusion.
When you talk to your client on the phone or in person, it’s also a good idea to go over those billing entries or any of the written communications you’ve sent them just to make sure that they understand every single word. And so you understand exactly how they communicate.
You want to make sure that you know whether your messages are getting through or not, and then adjust accordingly. Writing for senior attorneys or colleagues is probably going to be the most detailed, comprehensive, and technical writing that you’re going to do. Senior attorneys expect thoroughness and legal documentation with citations, strategies, and analysis included in what you’re giving them, but they also want brevity.
So there’s kind of a fine line that you need to observe there. It’s a little bit of a paradox. Additionally, you want to be able to anticipate their [00:05:00] questions and answer them beforehand in your writing so they don’t have to come back and ask you. Present all of the relevant information you have clearly and thoroughly. Now, of course, the more that you work with a senior attorney, the more you’re going to begin to understand their preferred writing style, and you’ll be able to deliver documents exactly in the style that they expect them to be delivered in.
But one helpful tip is to present all relevant information clearly and thoroughly up front, and don’t let it sit somewhere lost at the end of the document. Senior attorneys are busy, and like judges, they want you to get to the point. But they’re also attorneys, so they’re going to want to have the detail as well.
So you need to know how to separate out the information that you’re giving them, where it goes in the document, and where you want to be direct and to the point, and where you want to include more detail. The writing you put together for the senior attorneys is probably going to take the most skill and the most time.
Now that’s not always true, but considering the blend between short and to the point, [00:06:00] And then fleshed out and detailed, it’s just going to take a little bit of focus to get it right.
So remember that you’re going to want to make sure that you Adjust the tone based on who it is that you’re writing to. First and foremost, you want to consider your audience.
Judges may expect a more formal approach. While clients may need you to be a little bit more conversational and stress clarity with clients, remember that you’re always demonstrating the value of the work that you’re performing, but you also wanna be careful not to overwhelm the reader. As for the length of your writing, judges want brevity and precision, while clients may want more context. It’s going to depend on what the senior attorney is looking for at the time, so make sure you ask what’s needed with each and every assignment. But in general, even if a piece of writing contains a lot of supporting information, senior attorneys are looking for brevity, or at least they want to get to the point up front. So remember that whoever you’re writing to, your writing needs to be [00:07:00] clear. Stay mindful about who your audience is and tailor your writing to that particular type of audience. Once you’re done with a draft, read your work as if you’re reading it through the eyes of the audience so you can ask yourself if you need to make any changes in order to better communicate your message the best way possible.
I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for stopping by and checking out this episode. If you like this podcast and you’d like to get more information about us, you can always go to our website at classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two courtroom.
com, where you can send us a message to keep in touch with us. If you like, you can even inquire about our seasonal associate programs that we have available for law school students. You can apply to come work with us. And as always don’t forget to share like and subscribe to stay on top of all of our latest episodes And until next time we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place one client at a time
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