By: Aubrie Souza

For me, legal writing is a technical build. Instead of researching local laws to write a memo or brief I’ve spent my law school internships teaching a computer how to write for a lawyer. I have never written a contract, but I did program the automation for one. Automated drafting tools are the future of legal writing, but they are based in the fundamentals from your first-year legal writing class.

Despite the joke that lawyers go to law school to avoid math, law students are often learning a different kind of equation. “CREAC” is a formula; Inside the “E” paragraph we learn “FHR” (facts plus holding plus reasoning). Of course, there is an art to writing inside that formula, but a structure exists. Similarly, legal analysis can be broken down into a map.

I recently spent a semester with the Legal Operations team of Micron Technology, Inc., a giant in the memory and storage technology industry. The in-house legal team touches as many contracts as the company makes memory cards (or at least it felt like it). It only makes sense that the company producing the smartest parts of our computers has a legal team that is on the forefront of legal technology. I joined Micron as the Legal Operations team continued its long-term project to automate contracting across the company.

Responding to a business need with the official legal catchall “Well, it depends” was not an acceptable final answer for the Micron team. The team pushed to document, “Well, what does it depend on?” What it depends on is not a mystery but a variable to be input into a formula and solved. My assignment was to map the variables in the insurance exhibit attached to Micron Master Service Agreements. With the Risk team, the variables became questions such as “What is the type of work?” and “Where does the work take place?” The first step was to standardize the language, simplifying the formula. Then, the automated tool would seek inputs to define the variables and populate the exhibit before the request reached the legal team. The design also included raising a flag, instead of producing a contract it could call for the legal team to get involved. Either way, the resulting contract or conversation is structured to protect the company.

The most valuable technical lesson I learned at Micron was that just because automation can account for seemingly infinite intricacies, the best work often does not involve that degree of computer complexity. Sometimes multiple layers of automated rules indicated that editing of the language was necessary. I realized the first technical solution to simplify the formula is the same lesson I learned on day 1 of my Legal Practice Skills class: better, clearer language that simplifies communication is always best.