As many of us already know to write legal documents is quite a challenging task. Those with a legal background and practicing law know that as soon as we come out of Law School we cannot really write properly and it all (like everything) comes with experience. This is with legal writing in your own language. Imagine when it comes to drafting legal documents or even deal with correspondence in English.This is why some Law Schools now offer especially dedicated courses to develop such tasks, for instance the Riga Graduate School of Law in Latvia where I had the pleasure to teach a “Legal writing” course to Master students.
What does Legal writing entail?
A lot actually. Not only does it require knowledge of legal terms and concepts: it also requires a special focus on grammar/syntax/vocabulary of formal and also informal language. But that’s not all: a very important part of writing (and not only legal) is style. We obviously appreciate the difference between styles in our own language but we may be mislead when it comes to writing in English.
Is it important?
Absolutely. We may think that, as lawyers, students, lecturers there will always be some prop helping us in this task as long as we get the message across but that is not accurate. We might become very skilled at writing but that does not happen overnight and it takes study, hard work, dedication and a great quantity of patience. The question that may arise is if this would eventually pay off and I guess we already know the answer.
When it comes to choosing a lawyer, a candidate or a professor such an ability will surely be appreciated and determine a criterion to choose one person over another, on firm over another and so on.
At M2 Legal Services we offer structured Legal writing courses to acquire skills to excel in the legal profession, legal studies or legal teaching. Ask for more information .