And if we are careless in our writing, that carelessness can prevent us from advancing, weaken relationships with clients, superiors, and judges, and stain our reputation with colleagues. So, fair or not, we might be brilliant legal tacticians-honest, wise, creative, and intelligent-but in the legal world, our colleagues, partners, clients, and judges see us through our writing. No matter what the profession, it’s the impression it creates, which might be opposite the truth. While teaching over a thousand writing programs to law firms, I often compared legal writing to plumbing, reminding lawyers of the phenomenon that occurs when we shop for a plumber online: we’re drawn by the layout and text of plumbing websites, consciously or subconsciously assuming that a plumber with a crude, poorly written website can’t know much about toilets. If we aren’t careful, our other wonderful traits can seem unimportant.

But the most important aspect of that professional reputation is carefulness.

In a law practice, all of these and more form our professional reputations. And honesty, integrity, creativity, intelligence, wisdom, carefulness. I was just old enough to appreciate the idea: How do others assess what we do, then determine who we are, and therefore what we might do next time? Can they rely on us? That’s our reputation, and all sorts of things go into forming it-sloppiness, forgetfulness, rudeness, crudeness, tardiness, carelessness. When I was a teenager, my father taught me that as we go through life, the most important thing we possess is our reputation.

Wordrake software