We are lawyers and writers who teach other lawyers how to improve their writing. We see a lot of room for improvement.

For lawyers, learning to write clearly is more important than ever. In this new era of lockdowns and Zoom meetings, a concise, easy-to-understand piece of good writing is the best way to cut through the noise.

Many lawyers find writing to be daunting. Law school tends to drill into their heads the fear of not putting everything down on paper; at the same time, law schools don’t necessarily focus on coaching the essentials of good writing.

That’s a problem. When young lawyers start practising, too often they live in terror that if they get a word wrong or don’t say enough, it can have drastic consequences.

The results are often terrible: overwritten, hard-to-read and even harder to understand communication that achieves exactly the opposite of what a good lawyer should produce and what clients rightly expect.

Lawyers should remember that, while everyone can write things down, it takes hard work and skill to do this with purpose and effect. It takes practice to say what you want in ways that readers will understand and respond to. It can take years for lawyers to learn to write complicated technical documents and form cogent written legal arguments.

There’s a story about a brain surgeon who met a famous writer at a cocktail party.

“What do you do?” asked the surgeon.

“I’m a writer,” the writer said.

“Oh,” the surgeon said, “I’m thinking of writing a book.”

“Really,” she replied, “I’m thinking of being a brain surgeon.”

The point is, you wouldn’t slice into someone’s head without preparation and training. And you — and that’s all of us — should not try to wing it with one of your most important professional tasks. Writers get better by seeking guidance, asking for critique and learning to listen. Remember, the reader is always right.

Here’s a big tip. Before you start to write, ask yourself some simple questions. What do you, or your client want? What do you need to say?

In screenwriting there’s something they call the logline. One or two sentences that capture what a show or series is about. “Mob boss with an anxiety problem” — The Sopranos.

Before you write your letter, your memo, your legal opinion or argument, write out your own logline. And then stick to the script. A simple example: if you are writing a creditor’s letter for a client demanding the repayment of $5,000, write out what you want. Explain why the money is owed, tell them when to pay, how to do it and what will happen if they do or they don’t.

It sounds simple, but it’s not. Saying exactly what you want is the most important thing because the muddier the writing, the easier it is to be ignored.

This leads to an even bigger tip, which we consider the most common lawyer-writing crime — beware of legalese.

We collect what we call our own list of 10 worst lawyers’ word-waste. Example: instead of writing, “In the event, and in consideration of the aforementioned, I am of the opinion that,” why not just write “I think that,” or even simpler “I believe?”

Another important point: less is more. Easy to say, hard to do. Try this: take a piece of writing that you are struggling with and cut out half the words. At least 25 per cent if that’s too hard.

Then ask someone else to read it aloud while you have a copy in front of you and a red pen. Listen — and cross out as many more words as you possibly can.

Finally, remember to be clear rather than clever. “No one is paying to find out what a genius you are. They’re paying to find out what’s going on,” is how a wise newspaper editor used to put it.

When you edit and review, make sure your grammar, spelling and punctuation are perfect. Nothing less will do. Mistakes often happen in the age of auto-spellcheck; when they do, it defeats the purpose of your writing and reflects poorly on you.

Great writing isn’t easy, but it should be easy to read. We live in the era of instant communication that people often wish they could take back — but if you write it well the first time, you’ll be the winner.

David Israelson is a non-practising lawyer, author and journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @davidisraelson or on Linkedin. Robert Rotenberg is a criminal lawyer at his firm Rotenberg, Shidlowski, Jesin and the author of five bestselling legal thrillers. His sixth will be published in February 2021. Together they teach lawyers and business executives how to improve their writing and communication skills.