Legal Writing as Project Management

AuthorJohn Hollander
Pages23-60
legal writing as project management

chapter two
Legal Writing as Project
Management
   ideas and techniques that treat
legal writing as a project. ere is no fundamental dier-
ence between how any professional tackles a problem and
how it is tackled by a lawyer. Lawyers and other profes-
sionals must consider their work in light of the needs of
their clients, and after completing a careful analysis, they
must tailor their work to the circumstances of the case.
e dierence lies in how their conclusions are com-
municated. Lawyers represent clients in dealing with the
outside world, whether it be opposing parties, transaction-
al counterparties, institutions, courts, or otherwise. When
they do so, they must communicate what their client has
to say as the client chose to speak or act through a lawyer.
at lawyer should speak in a way that best transmits the
client’s position. Lawyers are by nature a methodical pro-
fession; they build an argument a position based on
an accumulation of factual and legal knowledge. en they
arrange that knowledge into a presentation to persuade the
audience of the correctness of their conclusion. e process
by which lawyers convert that accumulation into a persua-
sive presentation is a project that requires management.
 

How do professionals manage their projects? First,
they must have something to say. If a junior lawyer re-
ceives a memo that requests legal research into a thorny
issue facing a senior lawyer, how does that junior lawyer
go about satisfying the request? Additionally, that jun-
ior lawyer has to assemble the various components of
the presentation, from facts to law to conclusion. is
handbook provides some of the tools necessary to com-
municate that opinion or conclusion eectively. is
chapter deals with the project as such — as a project to be
managed — and also introduces several subjects that are
explored in greater detail in later sections.
Project Management
   itself an art form. Within the
legal profession, each area of legal practice considers its
approach to be distinct from all others. Examples are that
an estates lawyer may approach a contested probate ap-
plication dierently from a family law practitioner with
a domestic contract to draft. Also, because lawyers are
trained to see each client as unique, they approach each
case dierently. Despite this aversion to “one size ts all,”
lawyers do consider drafting projects from a global per-
spective. ey ask:
• Who is the client?
• Who is paying for the task?
• Who are the other parties?
• Who will read the document and why?
• What will be the legal impact of the document?
legal writing as project management

• What rights or obligations are at stake?
• What will be the future use of the document?
• How likely is it to be altered in the future, and by
whom?
• What disputes could arise?
• What are the consequences of any given course of
action?
ere will be other pertinent questions that depend on
the purpose of the document and other factors. e law-
yer — as a professional puts the interest of the client rst
within the connes of the lawyer’s duty to the regulator
and to the judiciary. Seen as a project management exer-
cise, the lawyer tackles the writing project in distinct stages.
The process
   develop a persuasive argument consists
of these basic steps:
. Start with your mandate (your instructions). What
are you supposed to do?
. Conduct your investigation (research, document re-
views, and interviews) until you can meet the require-
ments of the project.
. When your investigation is complete, identify the
central idea or thought that you want to communi-
cate. Record all the logical steps that prove that idea.
Earlier in this handbook, we called this your “theory.”
. Perform the legal analysis that best establishes the
point. You learned how to do this in law school.
. Flesh out the progression of points into a narrative
format that is suitable for the circumstances.

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT