Assessing the Writing Skills of New Law Graduates:
A Comparison of the Attitudes of Judges, Lawyers
and Legal Writing Professors
Susan Hanley Kosse and David T. ButleRitchie

We have frequently been approached by members of the legal profession who asked why students had such poor writing skills. This question made us wonder whether legal writing teachers are being responsive to the needs of the profession. To explore this, we designed a survey (which many of you answered at the 2001 CAL conference in New York), which asked members of the profession - attorneys, judges and law professors - what they thought of the writing skills of their colleagues. We asked respondents for their opinions about elements generally acknowledged as key to good legal writing and provided them with a checklist of elements that are commonly included in appellate briefs and memoranda. Respondents were asked to rank the elements in each section. The results of this survey gave us an idea of what each group perceived to be the best indicators of good writing.

In this article we report back to you some of our findings. First, our response rate can be depicted as follows:

When asked about the essential elements of good writing, the respondents indicated:

When we began this project, we anticipated that there would be wide discrepancies between the views of law professors and members of the profession generally. This turns out not to be the case, however. There was no difference among respondents as to which elements were key. The attorneys, judges and legal writing professors all ranked clarity and conciseness as the two most essential elements of good writing. This suggests that legal writing professors are teaching what the bench and bar perceive to be key to good writing.

This was confirmed in part three of the survey where we asked participants to rank certain elements that have been commonly identified as essential parts of good briefs and legal memoranda. Respondents ranked separate elements for the question presented, brief answer, statement of facts, point headings, legal analysis, organization, style and format. Respondents from each group ranked the elements for each separate section in remarkably similar fashion. We include the ranking for the statement of facts elements as an illustration.

There was a similar consensus when respondents were asked about the strength of the writing they see. The vast majority of respondents in all groups felt that members of the profession generally do not write well.

Percentage of respondents who believed briefs and other memoranda exhibit basic writing problems
Percent that thinks there are problems in writing
All groups of respondents 93.5%
Attorneys 92.5%
State Judges 93.6%
Federal Judges 93.8%
Legal Writing Professors 95.1%
When asked whether new graduates write well compared with more senior members of the profession, respondents replied:

New Members write well	New members do not write well
44.3%	57.3%

This raised a second question: Why do members of the profession write poorly if legal writing professors are teaching the right skills? In our article (to be published in Journal of Legal Education Vol. 53, issue 1, in late March 2003) we examine in detail possible reasons why lawyers do not write well. These include:

Ultimately we concluded that the factors that contribute to poor writing by members of the profession are varied and complex. We recommend implementing more robust legal writing and skills components in all American law schools. This includes increasing the status of the professors who teach this most important skill as well as more offerings in the law school curriculum. In addition, increased access to ongoing writing instruction for current members of the profession is vital to improving the quality of writing.

We would like to thank the members of the Council of Appellate Lawyers for responding to our survey. Your responses was extremely helpful to us. Since we can only give you a glimpse of our findings in this newsletter we hope you will read our entire article. We also hope the bench, bar and academy will use this article to brainstorm on ways all of us can improve legal writing.