Law firm hiring partners and training supervisors agree that new lawyers should be able to draft basic legal memos quickly. But until now, even the best training courses have treated memo-writing as just a question of writing law and analysis, rather than also of having the right organizational habits. Now, at last, in this CLE book, legal writing expert Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D. (Harvard), Ph.D., teaches junior lawyers how to build their memo-writing skills "like a sport . " Using six of the simulated law office memorandum tasks, sample answers, and analyses from her book Perform Your Best on the Bar Exam Performance Test (MPT), the tasks developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) for the MPT part of the bar exam, and adapting the unique systems she created for the MPT to the conditions of law practice, Dr. Gallagher helps lawyers develop the habits needed to research, organize, and draft their basic legal memos efficiently.

This legal writing book is designed to help students learn the basic elements of writing a legal memo.

Provides templates and detailed instructions for writing the formats on the Multistate Performance Test (MPT) part of the bar exam. Contains twelve (12) actual MPT tasks, as released by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) and used here with permission, in a variety of formats and a range of difficulty. Full sample answers for the MPT tasks and notes on analyzing all 12 tasks. Systems and checklists for managing time. Special tips for California bar candidates and for foreign-trained lawyers.

Legal memoranda are business documents, in which the writer communicates information to help the reader make a decision about one or more aspects of a legal matter they are addressing. This book explains how to organize and write legal memoranda that will communicate information to the reader clearly and effectively. It is written primarily for first-year law students, but upper-class law students and practicing attorneys can also use it, to produce more effective legal memoranda or written legal analyses generally. Professors and students will benefit from: The book’s emphasis on the basic rule for organizing business documents effectively—to state the most important information first—which applies to the legal memorandum as a whole, to its parts and subparts, and even to most of its paragraphs and individual sentences. The book’s reader-focused orientation, which anticipates information that a reader will find helpful in a memorandum and explains how, and where, the writer should include it. The individual chapters on the different parts of a legal memorandum, which provide concise but specific instruction about the purpose, format, organization, and effective presentation of each one. The separate chapter on informal and e-mail memoranda, which adapts the skills and strategies for organizing and writing formal legal memoranda to the shorter and less formal memoranda that attorneys frequently write. The chapter on How to Write Clearly, which contains specific guidelines for writing clear sentences and paragraphs, presenting related information clearly, and using correct grammar, precise word choice, and a clear, professional style. The extensive, annotated examples throughout the book, which illustrate how to organize and write the different parts of a memorandum—and how not to organize and write them.

From a master teacher and writer, a fully revised and updated edition of the results-oriented approach to legal writing that is clear, that persuades—and that WINS. More than almost any profession, the law has a deserved reputation for opaque, jargon-clogged writing. Yet forceful writing is one of the most potent weapons of legal advocacy. In this new edition of Writing to Win, Steven D. Stark, a former lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, who has inspired thousands of aspiring and practicing lawyers, applies the universal principles of powerful, vigorous prose to the job of making a legal case—and winning it. Writing to Win focuses on the writing of lawyers, not judges, and includes dozens of examples of effective (and ineffective) real-life legal writing—as well as compelling models drawn from advertising, journalism, and fiction. It deals with the challenges lawyers face in writing, from organization to strengthening and editing prose; offers incisive ways of improving arguments; addresses litigation and technical writing in all its forms; and covers the writing attorneys must perform in their daily practice, from email memos to briefs and contracts. Each chapter opens with a succinct set of rules for easy reference. With new sections on client communication and drafting affidavits, as well as updated material throughout, Writing to Win is the most practical and efficacious legal-writing manual available.

Good legal writing wins court cases. It its first edition, The Winning Brief proved that the key to writing well is understanding the judicial readership. Now, in a revised and updated version of this modern classic, Bryan A. Garner explains the art of effective writing in 100 concise, practical, and easy-to-use sections. Covering everything from the rules for planning and organizing a brief to openers that can capture a judge's attention from the first few words, these tips add up to the most compelling, orderly, and visually appealing brief that an advocate can present. In Garner's view, good writing is good thinking put to paper. "Never write a sentence that you couldn't easily speak," he warns-and demonstrates how to do just that. Beginning each tip with a set of quotable quotes from experts, he then gives masterly advice on building sound paragraphs, drafting crisp sentences, choosing the best words ("Strike pursuant to from your vocabulary."), quoting authority, citing sources, and designing a document that looks as impressive as it reads. Throughout, he shows how to edit for maximal impact, using vivid before-and-after examples that apply the basics of rhetoric to persuasive writing. Filled with examples of good and bad writing from actual briefs filed in courts of all types, The Winning Brief also covers the new appellate rules for preparing federal briefs. Constantly collecting material from his seminars and polling judges for their preferences, the second edition delivers the same solid guidelines with even more supporting evidence. Including for the first time sections on the ever-changing rules of acceptable legal writing, Garner's new edition keeps even the most seasoned lawyers on their toes and writing briefs that win cases. An invaluable resource for attorneys, law clerks, judges, paralegals, law students and their teachers, The Winning Brief has the qualities that make all of Garner's books so popular: authority, accessibility, and page after page of techniques that work. If you're writing to win a case, this book shouldn't merely be on your shelf--it should be open on your desk.