If you’ve ever read Frankenstein, you probably spotted the theme without much effort.

Themes are moral, emotional, or practical principles that tie some or all of a document together 📑

But what is the best advice when choosing a theme? (1/10) ✅ Consider your audience and the atmospherics.

Is there a counterargument to your position, a bias your decision-maker will likely have, or some other obvious force working against you?

That’s where you push back. Here’s an example from the NYT v. OpenAI case: (2/10)

Top legal writers know quality often trumps quantity.

Let’s check out some powerhouse legal writing moves from two teams that couldn’t be more different:

An elite group at the U.S. Supreme Court led by @PaulWeissLLP and a small plaintiff’s firm out of Nevada. 1/🧵 In the opening paragraphs, there were many details the Paul Weiss team could have pointed to.

But instead, they highlighted the single most powerful emotional point. 2/

Dry, dense legal issues in the hands of incredible legal writers at @omelvenymyers, @SidleyLaw, @McDermottLaw, @JennerBlockLLP, @troutmanpepper, @BlankRomeLLP, @DorseyWhitney, and Kellogg, Hansen?

Easy-to-read and easy-to-understand briefs.

Let's see how (a🧵1/x) Responding Done Right.

Many legal writers pen their responses and replies as if their readers had carefully memorized every detail in the prior documents. No.

Check out how the @omelvenymyers pros remind you of enough specifics in a reply so that you can understand now.

Legal Writing Mastery: A Thread 🖋️

🌟 We talk about the power of distilling a lot at @writedotlaw. Not just as an aspiration, but as a skill that only the best legal writers are good at.

Check out some great examples from briefs filed this week across the nation. 1/ Check out how much Supreme Court regular Paul Clement and his team pack into the first sentence of a reply brief this week.

Those specifics dish up most of what you need to know—in the entire brief—with a single opener.

What happens when legal writing pros at firms like @JennerBlockLLP and @bsfllp tackle a tough case?

Fantastic legal writing lessons for us all.

Check out how some of the best lawyers craft the crux, prime audiences to win, and list their path to victory! /x Introductions are everything.

Legal readers these days want the specific questions and answers at the outset. If they can decide your case in five minutes, all the better!

Start by orienting readers to what your document is about and the questions they need to answer.

@Disney's complaint against Florida is a master class in advocating through pleadings.

A killer ToC, emotional priming, and surgical quoting give us a lot to learn from!

1/x ☑️ Emotional Priming: Reframe the Bad Facts.

The greatest legal writers don't run from the bad facts.

Instead, they often manage the bad in a couple of ways: (1) providing counter facts that detract from the bad or (2) reframing the bad facts so they look better.

Who wants to see some data on what separates amazing legal writing from the run-of-the-mill stuff?

We compared 50 legal briefs from across the country with a random sample of 10 Justice Kagan opinions.

Any differences?

Oh, yea.

Here's some of what we found. 1/x Fewer state-of-being and to-be verbs:

Justice Kagan used bland state-of-being verbs (like is, was, are, etc.) on average, 1 time for every 16 times the lawyers used them.

What does a brief look like when a dozen legal writing superstars (from @wilsonsonsini, Williams & Connolly LLP, and others) team up to write it?

Google's brief in Gonzalez.

We read a ton of legal writing, and Lisa Blatt and her team created magic here.

Let's see how. 1/x What makes this brief so special is that it's a tour de force in a tricky (but powerful) technique: Emotional priming.

YouTube was accused of recommending ISIS terrorist videos to users. So the crack-shot team knew they had to do some emotional work before the legal stuff.

We had #ChatGPT write a legal brief.

But instead of giving it a simple open-ended prompt, we taught it how to use some of the techniques used by the best legal writers in the world.

Check out what it came up with—if only more legal writers wrote this well. 1/x To celebrate the upcoming launch of Write.law's new AI legal writing practice, we had our team work with GPT to write a motion from start to finish.

All we used was a simple list of factual details, some legal research notes, and our teams' prompts.

2/x

I may have found the best brief of the year. The backstory is like a Netflix special: Rural North Carolina families feud with hog farm that's dumping "waste" on their lawns and driveways.

Boutique Hilton Parker shows off ridiculously good writing techniques here. Seriously. 1/x Craft fact headings that tell a story on their face—while also categorizing the major factual takeaways

☑️ Divide your fact background into a few manageable categories

☑️ Make your headings tell a story on their face

☑️ Highlight the most persuasive facts from each section

Finding great legal writing isn't that hard. Just look to the best—like the crack shot attorneys at @KelloggHansen

There's a reason @DavidLat called them the "uber-elite, D.C.-based litigation boutique."

They make it look so easy.

Let's see how. 1/x The best introductions are so simple they feel like common sense.

Many legal writers dive straight into the details: weighing readers down with section numbers, clunky case names, and everything else readers have no context for yet.

Instead, strive to tell a simple story.

Two lawyers writing on the same topic.

One instantly sells you: The points are so direct and logical—it all just makes sense.

The second covers the same stuff, but the message is so tangled you get lost.

Being that first lawyer is easier than it seems. Let's see how /X Judges can be the snappiest legal writers around. So this week, let's look at some writing moves from one of our favorite judicial writers, federal Judge Jennifer Dorsey. 

☑️ First up: Label key concepts descriptively so they're easy to remember throughout your document.

When imagining the best legal writers, you might think of big names at big firms.

But small firms have powerhouses, too.

Case in point: A ridiculously good brief penned by a plaintiff's attorney at the boutique Hilton Parker LLC.

Check this out. 1/X In the introduction:

☑️ You need no background to get into the story.

☑️ Facts do the heavy lifting instead of opinions.

☑️ Readers aren't bogged down by case law.

☑️ Storytelling is center stage (as are emotional facts); sentences are about actors carrying out actions.

What do EPA point-source rules, radio stations, and court-appointed receivers have in common?

They are all the subject of some great legal writing penned by the pros at @GlaserWeil!

Check out 7 simple strategies to elevate your legal prose, straight from these experts. /X Head(ings) I win! 

Pick up a random brief, and chances are the headings will tell you little (if anything) that matters.

☑️ The authors here tell you everything about a section in a quick heading. You know what court decision matters, why it matters, and the result.

Sending $500m on accident is sensational enough. The legal teams @HoganLovells @Mayer_Brown for Citibank kept things concrete and common sense from the start.

And that paid off.

A brief that saved half a billion must have some legal writing lessons worth looking at... 1/X Legal readers are busier than ever: Craft an elevator pitch that sells them.

✔️ The first sentence orients readers from ground zero

✔️ The law is woven in with conversational language (ordinarily...)

✔️Em dashes highlight the hardest-hitting fact

✔️Appeal to common sense

By popular request, let's explore some legal-writing tricks courtesy of the all-star @Twitter team in the Elon Musk complaint!

Legal folks often ignore that complaints can be good for more than just leaping the pleading hurdle. They can persuade, too. 1/X Use movie trailers. Readers crave frameworks before details. Give readers the bones of the story so that as they dig into the specifics, they already know where everything grafts onto. And use your best style out of the gate to make the best first impression.

With a slew of #SCOTUS opinions comes lots of great #legalwriting examples!

In Justice Kagan's Wooden v. U.S. opinion, let's break down three simple tools we can all use:

1. TLDR Intros
2. Simple Sentences
3. Trendy Transitions

1/x TLDR Intros (quick intros that dish the key points in a document) are now common with judges and lawyers alike.

How do the greats craft them?

1. Give readers context - why is this dispute here?
2. Insert choice details to prime
3. Highlight your legal pitch

Check out the cool writing choices made by the stellar #legalwriting teams at @WinstonLaw and @Kirkland_Ellis in this single-paragraph introduction kicking off a reply filed today.

Even replying, these pros package everything readers need into a powerfully-written package. 1/x Verbs chosen with care: Not what most would write (the statute is applicable only to...). Instead, the subject is an actor (the Supreme Court) and it's carrying out actions that push the advocacy points (narrowing, requiring, demanding, urging to criminalize...).

Another set of legal writing lessons from @Kirkland_Ellis's Paul Clement that I so wish more folks would use. It's not that hard (sorry Paul), and you can do it too! This is all from an everyday cert petition (linked at the end). 1/X First, Clement shows us how to put the question/issue presented to good use. Crafting a good issue-presented is true art: You've got a few sentences to capture the nub of the dispute--all while trying to frame things favorably, but not too favorably.

Why I often use Justice Kagan to teach good writing.

You can randomly pick up just about anything this Justice writes and find dozens of simple, repeatable moves that so very much help readers.

Someone challenged me to do that with the first few pages of her decision today. Introductions that instantly give readers context and help them understand the stakes.

Perhaps the best distiller of complex concepts that I've ever found.