Vol. 74, No. 7, July 2001

Preparing for Practice Page 1

Vital Skills

Along with legal analytical and reasoning skills, the ability to communicate well ranks high on numerous lists of essential lawyering skills.2 Legal employers and law school graduates alike ranked these as the most important skills in Assessment 2000, a survey study conducted last year by attorney and U.W. Law School Assistant Dean Carolyn Lazar Butler for the University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison, with funding from the Benchers Society. From that study, "a clear message was that we do a wonderful job teaching people to analyze legal issues and legal problems," says Dean Kenneth B. Davis Jr., "but we need to do better at working on communication and other kinds of professional skills."

St. Louis attorney Diane Yu hears the same sort of reactions as she visits law schools and talks to lawyers across the country in her capacity as chair of the ABA Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Section. "One of the concerns I hear about most is writing quality," Yu says, "and specifically, what's persuasive writing versus just a bunch of words."

Both Wisconsin law schools pour significant resources into teaching legal writing. Still, it seems they could never do too much, as legal employers see it. All first-year law students at both schools take legal writing as a requirement, and they can follow up later with an advanced legal writing course. Nearly two-thirds of employers surveyed in Assessment 2000 believe that advanced legal writing should be a part of a law student's basic education, in addition to the introductory course.

And yet law students often don't take full advantage of opportunities in law school to improve their writing skills, or realize that such opportunities are available to them, says Laura Dunek, a 1996 U.W. Law School graduate who now teaches a first-year legal writing and research course there. She's also president of the State Bar of Wisconsin Young Lawyers Division.

Dunek believes law students need to be proactive in developing the skills necessary to succeed in their legal careers. Now that she's an instructor, Dunek makes sure her first-year law students understand the importance of getting advanced training in legal writing and research skills, whether through course work or practical learning experience. At the beginning of the semester, she informs her students that of the 90 credits required to graduate, only three have to be in a legal research and writing class, and the remaining 87 could all be in substantive law courses. "I tell them they have to even the score a bit," Dunek says. "I also tell them that, as hard as I may try, I can't give them everything they need in three credits. With writing skills, you start with a foundation, and then you build upon those skills."

And that, points out Madison attorney Joy O'Grosky, is a career-long process. "Anybody who believes that people leave law school with all the writing skill they need is misguided," says O'Grosky, who's been in practice since graduating from the U.W. Law School in 1987. "I'm still improving my writing, and I think anybody who's good at it does that."

While O'Grosky sees adequate mechanical writing skills in the medical malpractice litigation associates she trains in her law firm, what she believes is severely lacking is new lawyers' ability to organize their thoughts, which impacts the strength of both their oral and written communications. And it's gotten worse during the 14 years O'Grosky has worked with new lawyers, who have been graduates of many different law schools.

The cause, she believes, is a growing dependency on computers. She stresses that in no way is she condemning computers; she uses her own heavily in all phases of her practice, from research to jury presentations. But in young people, she sees a lack of being able to think a matter through without having it laid out before their eyes on a computer screen. "They can't think in their heads," O'Grosky contends. "I'll say to them, 'Tell me if you think we should sequester witnesses,' and they just sit there, looking at me. Then I say, 'Pound out your answer on the computer.' You wouldn't believe the difference."

Because of this tendency, new lawyers' oral communications suffer because they can't respond on the spot, as lawyers often must. As for written communication, the generation that grew up with "cut and paste" is accustomed to spewing out paragraphs and then rearranging them. "They don't know how to outline or just sit down and think through the logical flow of ideas first," O'Grosky observes. "So they'll move things around on the screen, but the result is still disorganized. Things are just in another place."

It's not a matter of blaming young lawyers for this deficiency, O'Grosky emphasizes, nor of expecting law schools to fix it before young lawyers enter practice. Rather, it's a sign of the times that legal educators and practitioners both need to recognize and try to remedy. "It's foolish to expect law schools to teach how to advocate (through effective legal writing). That's what experienced lawyers have to be willing to contribute. It's a challenge for all of us," she says. "We have to find ways to teach people skills they have never had to develop."

Preparing for Practice Page 3: Street Smarts