Legal blogging has opened up new doors for me. I just hope those doors don’t shut as soon as somebody starts reading this. I’ll say this: blogging has been one of the best things to happen to me as I set out on my own and try to start a law firm.
As an undergraduate English major at the University of Iowa, I would read and write often. Maybe not well, but often. After college, I decided to go to law school for a variety of reasons; several of them being that I expected law school to be intellectually challenging and allow me to write on a consistent basis. It was and it has.
Law school also opened new writing doors for me. Learning to focus my writing so that it appeals to a judge or benefits a client has been a great source of personal satisfaction. Writing well, as legal-writing guru Bryan Garner has stated, is a thing to be studied over a lifetime.
Being a lawyer has taught me how to write in a strict, formalized manner – otherwise known by the oft-maligned acronyms: IRAC, CRUPAC, or (my favorite) CRAC. Some have even wondered if IRAC is good or evil. I won’t speculate on that now – such weighty issues are the purpose of another post.
However, after writing some odd-hundred ideas, rants, thoughts, and opinions on this blog, I have begun to realize that this blog is extremely valuable to me to grow as a writer – legal or not. I’ll also let you in on a little secret: it doesn’t always go so well. Go read some of my old posts, they’re not so good. I have thought hard about going back and making prior posts better. However, I know that my later posts – like this one – are probably not going to look very good a few months down the road. Why would that be? Because, I am growing (ever so slowly) as a legal blogger.
Legal blogging is different animal than legal writing. One can write about case law on a blog in a law-school-trained manner. However, I would bet that many lawyers find that kind of writing a little tedious. Lawyers are forced to write like lawyers every day, all day. Why not let your freak-flag fly a bit?
In my humble opinion, legal blogs are not great vehicles for Issue, Fact, Application, Conclusion. Isn’t it a bit tiring to read blogs that cite case law and then commence discussing the facts and issues before reaching an inevitable, preordained conclusion? If I wanted to know about the facts, I would go read the case myself.
I am not, however, condoning sloppy writing. I am discouraging boring writing. In an effort not to sound overly hypocritical, I’ll admit that I’m guilty of boring and bad writing at times. I may be writing poorly right now. Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.
However, I know that trying to write on a consistent basis, keeping the topics timely and (I hope) relevant, has made me a better writer. That is something that will only benefit my abilities as a lawyer in the future. Furthermore, I believe that legal blogging allows lawyers to have a more of a personal, perhaps informal voice. As I have discussed, I think I am having a sea change. I have always been interested in blogging because it allows my inner English major to come out and play. I know this: I may not be playing the game well, but at least I am playing it.
