Writing Is A Lawyer's Trade

"It is difficult to overstate the importance of a written paper for a young lawyer's career, especially if the piece is published. Grades, of necessity, are somewhat grainy and subjective; is an A- that much better than a B+? Letters of recommendation can be more useful, but they still rely on someone else's judgment, and they often have a stale booster quality about them. Words like "fabulous" and "extraordinary" lose their force by dint of repetition...

A paper is very different. It is the applicant's raw work product, unfiltered through a third-party evaluator. By reading it, you can personally evaluate the student's writing, research, logic and judgment. Are the sentences sleek and lithe or ponderous and convoluted? Does he lay out his argument in a logical fashion, and does he anticipate and refute objections? Is the topic broad enough to be useful, yet narrow enough to be adequately covered? Is it persuasive? Is it fun to read? Writing a paper engages so much of the lawyer's art that no other predictor of likely success on the job comes close. A well-written, well-researched, thoughtful paper can clinch that law firm job or clerkship. It is indispensable if you aim to teach."

- Judge Alex Kozinski in the foreword to Eugene Volokh's Academic Legal Writing

Here's a review of Volokh's book by Tiger Jackson and Jeff Newman, recommending it for law students getting ready for law review write-ons. I received a copy when I met Professor Volokh a few weeks ago.

More on the book here and here.