Hello and welcome back to Gimbal’s Tip of the Week — where WE provide YOU practical suggestions on to build a more profitable and productive law practice. And no, you definitely don’t need to be an attorney to benefit from our tips. They’re designed to help everyone working in the legal profession.

I’m Karen Dunn Skinner.

Last week, David gave you everything you need to know to get started managing your legal matters with a simple kanban or matter management board.

Today, we’re talking about writing again. Back in 2013, I wrote a blog post called Don’t Write Off…Write Better! Why Good Legal Writing is Lean, and recently I sent out a quick tip on the best book I’ve found on legal writing, Theodore Blumberg’s The Seven Deadly Sins of Legal Writing.

In our business, we talk a lot about value and waste. I keep coming back to writing because bad writing is a HUGE waste. According to a Harvard Business Review study, over 80% of people said they waste a huge amount of time on badly written material. It's too long, unclear, filled with jargon…

In law, poor writing causes defects and delays. It fills our inboxes and wastes our time on turns of our documents. For more on waste, take a look at our recent blog series on waste in law. I’ll link to it below, along with our free Eight-Wastes Workbook.

On the other hand, good legal writing adds value. It requires less rework. It takes less time to read and produce. And most importantly, it communicates your message accurately to clients and colleagues clearly and concisely.

That last sentence includes most of what I call the 5Cs of good writing: Communication, Common Errors (avoiding them, that is), Clarity, Concision, and Correction. 

Communication is a lot of what we do in law. And one key to successful communication is knowing your audience…and then writing for that audience.

Let’s say you’re writing an email to a client. For that email to be successful, it has to get opened. If you don’t know your audience and write your subject line and your content with that audience in mind, your email is going to fail. 

Whenever you sit down to write an email, and I mean this, every single time you sit down to write an email, ask yourself: Who am I writing for…and why?

Who am I writing for?

Do they need special information?

Are they extremely busy, and will therefore respond best to a very short email with a single demand, that’s immediately clear from the subject line?

Do they need you to use a particular vocabulary? For example, you might not use the same explanation for a client as you’d use for opposing counsel, for example.

Why are you writing them?

What do you need them to do with your message?

Have you given them a clear call to action? “Please let me know by 3 p.m. today” vs "Let me know.”

Have you constructed your message with everything your recipient needs to give you what YOU want? An appointment, a response to a question, a new draft of a document?

Always ask yourself: Who am I writing for…and why?

I could talk for ages about legal writing. Instead, I’m going to do more quick tips here on the blog from time to time. And one of my projects for next year is converting my existing live writing course into a compelling online course.

In the meantime, I want you to think about writing in the context of waste - are you writing in a way that adds value or wastes time and resources?

That’s it for this week. Join us next week for more on building a more profitable and productive law practice.

If you enjoyed this video, like it and share it, and maybe add a comment or ask us a question. We’ll get back to you. 

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Thanks a lot everybody! See you next week.