By: Timothy J. Duff

Being a successful lawyer is difficult. Being a happy, successful lawyer even more so. One reason is that lawyers are essentially professional writers, and writing is hard work—time consuming and stressful even when done well. Fortunately, however, you can maintain your well-being as a lawyer by focusing on the writing process.

Imagine the varied writing projects that you will face every day as a lawyer, from long-term projects due in three weeks, such as a motion for summary judgment or major transactional document, to short-term projects due at 5:00 p.m. today, such as an email to a more senior attorney or a client. All of this in busy days packed with many distractions. What process should you follow? What should the steps be?

Bryan Garner, in The Winning Brief—and in his many other books—provides helpful guidance on achieving the twin goals of legal writing: quality and efficiency. Explaining that writing projects should be well planned and broken into stages, Garner proposes that the Flowers paradigm, developed by Dr. Betty S. Flowers, a former English professor at the University of Texas, can help fulfill these objectives.

The Flowers paradigm breaks writing into four stages: brain-stormer, architect, carpenter, and judge. While the original paradigm refers to the initial stage as the madman, “brain-stormer” seems more appropriate for legal writing. In short, the brain-stormer develops the ideas, the architect creates the structure—the blueprint—for the ideas, the carpenter bangs away at writing it all up, and the judge looks it over, revising and editing.

This paradigm provides a simple, easy way to understand and embrace legal writing as a process with essential stages, not just the mushy concept of “writing.” The building metaphor shows the relationship between the stages and allows one to visualize the problems that arise from jumbling them together. For example, the judge getting in the way of the brain-stormer’s great ideas or the carpenter banging away without a blueprint. You would not want the carpenter building a house’s “west wing” only to have it torn down because it was not part of the plan, right? The same is true for your writing process.

But perhaps the main takeaway is that the writing process is the same for all writing. Thus, the process is really the same for writing that three-week project or that project due at the end of the day, it is only a matter of scaling the stages.

In short, you—the law student soon to be lawyer—need to recognize that (1) as lawyers you will be professional writers, (2) writing is a process that works best when broken into stages, and (3) you need to reflect on and develop your own individual writing process so that you can replicate it—again and again—with high quality and efficiency. If you practice these three principles, you will be well on your way to maintaining well-being—both success and happiness—as a practicing lawyer.

 

Timothy J. Duff
Lecturer in Law
Case Western Reserve University School of Law