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I'm a lit midlevel at a biglaw firm in a major market and I STILL get writing anxiety every time I'm assigned a motion. I'm wondering if others get this way too. If you do not get anxiety, what exactly is your process for completing a writing assignment that has a short turn around time? Maybe clerking would have helped me overcome this but I didn't clerk and have no plans to.

Tell me I'm not alone. Any strategies for getting through it?

Anonymous User wrote:I'm a lit midlevel at a biglaw firm in a major market and I STILL get writing anxiety every time I'm assigned a motion. I'm wondering if others get this way too. If you do not get anxiety, what exactly is your process for completing a writing assignment that has a short turn around time? Maybe clerking would have helped me overcome this but I didn't clerk and have no plans to.

Tell me I'm not alone. Any strategies for getting through it?

Just start typing. Even if it's a mess at first. Anxiety can hold you back from even putting a pen to the page. Just start typing and filling up the pages. Then you can circle back and cut out the junk, clean up typos, add in points, figure out what needs more explaining, etc.

First, don’t focus so much on the wordsmithing. Ultimately, if you are at a biglaw firm in a major market than the value in having you write the motion is not in your prose since the whole thing will be rewritten several times by partners and co-counsel anyway. Your value is in getting the structure/facts/arguments all down on a piece of paper so the partners can have something to react to, edit and order more research on. Also, judges in major markets are pretty smart and experienced. They’ve seen enough major commerical cases so that when they know the facts and the major issues they pretty much know what they want the outcome to be and it’s all about making sure that they have caselaw support to get there. I think a lot of the anxiety comes from the belief that you need to be writing some SCOTUS quality brief that 1Ls are going to read; you don’t and spending too much time perfecting the brief is a waste if that means you miss issues and arguments.

Second, delegation is key. It is so much easier to edit than draft. When I get a brief with a quick turnaround time I do an outline first and then I give a more detailed outline of a section to junior associates. It might be the fact section or issues 3-4 of a 4 issue brief, but if given enough guidance a junior is usually able to churn out work product that is pretty decent so I can focus on understanding the main argument. If you aren’t delegating entire sections of the brief to juniors then use them to do stuff like run down citations or research points while you draft the arguments; don’t try to fill in every citation yourself, that is just a time suck. I even use paralegals to pull precedent briefs from the system (I say “find me a bunch of motions to dismiss we did in securities class actions in the last 2 years”) or to bluebook/fill in citations as I am going.

Third, for a brief where there is a short turnaround time I follow the following formula.

Preliminary statement - this is basically the brief. It’s a persausive, punchy, uncited summary of the key facts and arguments. I write this after writing the below.
Facts - just a chronology of what happened in the case that led us to this point. I draft the SOF and let the juniors fill the cites in.
Argument - each section is broken up along the following lines: descriptive issue heading, summary para, paragraph citing the law, facts applied to law, summary of any cases directly on point.

Once you get the formula down, then most of your time is really spent figuring out what the arguments you want to make are and the best way to frame them.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I'm a lit midlevel at a biglaw firm in a major market and I STILL get writing anxiety every time I'm assigned a motion. I'm wondering if others get this way too. If you do not get anxiety, what exactly is your process for completing a writing assignment that has a short turn around time? Maybe clerking would have helped me overcome this but I didn't clerk and have no plans to.

Tell me I'm not alone. Any strategies for getting through it?

Just start typing. Even if it's a mess at first. Anxiety can hold you back from even putting a pen to the page. Just start typing and filling up the pages. Then you can circle back and cut out the junk, clean up typos, add in points, figure out what needs more explaining, etc.

Good point. The anxiety can be totally debilitating. I don't know why it feels like even when we're in early draft form, perfection is required. I guess, I feel like there's just so much judgment around writing and failure to do it perfectly will forever tarnish your reputation.

Anonymous User wrote:First, don’t focus so much on the wordsmithing. Ultimately, if you are at a biglaw firm in a major market than the value in having you write the motion is not in your prose since the whole thing will be rewritten several times by partners and co-counsel anyway. Your value is in getting the structure/facts/arguments all down on a piece of paper so the partners can have something to react to, edit and order more research on. Also, judges in major markets are pretty smart and experienced. They’ve seen enough major commerical cases so that when they know the facts and the major issues they pretty much know what they want the outcome to be and it’s all about making sure that they have caselaw support to get there. I think a lot of the anxiety comes from the belief that you need to be writing some SCOTUS quality brief that 1Ls are going to read; you don’t and spending too much time perfecting the brief is a waste if that means you miss issues and arguments.

Second, delegation is key. It is so much easier to edit than draft. When I get a brief with a quick turnaround time I do an outline first and then I give a more detailed outline of a section to junior associates. It might be the fact section or issues 3-4 of a 4 issue brief, but if given enough guidance a junior is usually able to churn out work product that is pretty decent so I can focus on understanding the main argument. If you aren’t delegating entire sections of the brief to juniors then use them to do stuff like run down citations or research points while you draft the arguments; don’t try to fill in every citation yourself, that is just a time suck. I even use paralegals to pull precedent briefs from the system (I say “find me a bunch of motions to dismiss we did in securities class actions in the last 2 years”) or to bluebook/fill in citations as I am going.

Third, for a brief where there is a short turnaround time I follow the following formula.

Preliminary statement - this is basically the brief. It’s a persausive, punchy, uncited summary of the key facts and arguments. I write this after writing the below.
Facts - just a chronology of what happened in the case that led us to this point. I draft the SOF and let the juniors fill the cites in.
Argument - each section is broken up along the following lines: descriptive issue heading, summary para, paragraph citing the law, facts applied to law, summary of any cases directly on point.

Once you get the formula down, then most of your time is really spent figuring out what the arguments you want to make are and the best way to frame them.

This is helpful. Thanks. Unfortunately, there are times when I'm the most junior person on the case. So, there's no one to delegate to. We are gearing up for trial and drafting lots of MILs, which will be followed by oppositions and replies. The turnaround time is so short that I'll likely have to draft 2 motions a day with no real time for perfection. I'm already getting anxious as I so hate feeling like I'm turning in less than my best quality work.