Writing advice for young lawyers and law students.

When I started at the bar, I was told a good way of getting noticed was to write articles and if possible, books. I have written four books so far and somewhere between 20-30 articles. That’s doing pretty well, although Stephen King and JK Rowling probably aren’t losing any sleep over me. This article is mainly aimed at young lawyers starting off their careers, but might be useful to college students as well.

WRITING STYLE

People don’t remember good writing, but they might remember bad writing. If you’ve ever read a college newspaper, you’ll know what I mean. Try and keep your style as simple as possible when starting off. People don’t read legal articles for prose, they read them to learn the law. I once had an essay where I talked about the “Stalinist desire for more convictions”, and I still sometimes cringe at that line. You should ditch unnecessary adjectives and try not to be verbose- otherwise it might look like you are trying to look smart. Don’t try and look smart- be smart! If you put your writing into websites like https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/ it will read it back to you and help you spot any errors.

ARTICLES

There are a number of different journals that may accept your work. There are often also competitions for college students which will accept work from lawyers in their first year or two of practise. Most student run law journals tend not be read by practising lawyers- so they may not get you that much attention. If you are looking to improve your CV in hopes of getting into a big firm they may still look good. When I was in UCD some of the lads I knew invented their own journal which ran for one issue. They were all able to say they were published authors and got in with different firms.[1] If you are looking to build your profile the higher profile the journal the better. One that is read by a lot of people in your target audience is always best.

When looking at writing for journals the first thing you should do is find what they want. Most will happily tell you the article length, citation style and general style they want. Some practitioner magazines might want an informal tone whereas academic journals will have an academic tone.  Some might pay too! One good tip when starting off is to have someone more senior help you with your article. I think the Law Society Gazette prefers if you are less than seven years in practise that you have someone do this. I found that articles I wrote that were reviewed by an SC were the most likely to be picked up. If you are in a solicitor’s firm perhaps one of the partners might be able to help, or if you are in college one of your lecturers.

FINDING MATERIAL TO WRITE ABOUT

Finding material to write about can be daunting at first. When I was in college a visiting Supreme Court judge slagged one of my lecturers over an article he had written criticising a recent high-profile judgment. The Judge said “I remember what it’s like to be a young lawyer casting desperately around for an article to write”. As it happens my former lecturer is now one of the most sought after  SCs in the country and may one day sit on the Supreme Court, so the criticism didn’t do him any harm. His article was right too!

If you want to write articles editors tend to be most interested in new things. Places you should look would be the Irish Statute Book for new legislation, or Courts.ie for new cases and practise directions. You can then explain what these new developments will mean for practitioners. I know a former colleague who said that every time he did an opinion, he would do an article later based on it. He would obviously anonymise it and remove anything that might identify the clients. That’s not something I’ve ever done but I have written a number of articles based on cases I would like to do in future. I have also written legal articles about social issues or aspects of technology that interest me. In my experience these have been harder to get published.

WRITING BOOKS

The hardest part about writing a book is getting it published. I am not being flippant in saying this. Actually writing a book is a little easier than doing legal submissions. Submissions have to be tailored to the facts of a case, whereas a book does not. Finding a book that hasn’t already been written and which publishers will accept is no easy task. Most of the books I want to write have the annoying habit of already being written (usually by Professor Tom O’Malley).

Due to COVID-19 publishers have become more risk averse and are now less likely to publish first editions of legal texts. I even had one book accepted to be published, which unfortunately was then turned down when the pandemic began prior to my signing the contract. Unfortunately, I was about 25 thousand words into it at that stage. Books which are part of a series- like Nutshells, are seen as less risky for publishers, as are later editions of books which already sell well. If you can find a gap in a market in one of those series, or better yet an author who will add you on as a co-author for a second edition, then you are in a better position. You should probably try and work on writing articles before you try for a book- it will give you practise and help your CV.

I’ve submitted to three publishers here in Ireland. They all want the same information when submitting a book proposal. Some of them even have forms that you can fill in with this information. It will usually contain stuff like word count, projected time and target audience. In particular the size of the audience will be the most important information. You might be able to write a textbook that is intellectually brilliant and which will change a field of law for ever, but if there are only 4 people in that field of law its unlikely to attract publishers. If that is the case you might look at self-publishing your book. This is not something I have any experience with but is something that is growing in popularity. If you are going to try traditional publishing first it will help if you have your sample chapter done prior to submitting it. Unlike fiction publishing you do not have to have a legal textbook finished before you propose it. Having a sample chapter done will show you are serious and will put you in the publisher’s good books.

[1] They also opened it up to international submissions to look more credible. A foreign submitter asked for a physical copy so they told him it cost €200 an issue to make him go away.