English/grammar skills as a corporate lawyer Forum

[corgiterrier17]

Litigators draft lots of memos and briefs but I believe corporate lawyers do not draft briefs/memos as much as litigators.

Would you say legal writing skills -- grammar, general English writing skills -- are important to succeed as a corporate lawyer?
What would be the important skills that you can start working on before graduating from law school?

[ghostoftraynor]

Yes, writing skills are incredibly important. A misplaced comma can literally cost your client millions of dollars.

[Anonymous User]

Litigators draft lots of memos and briefs but I believe corporate lawyers do not draft briefs/memos as much as litigators.

Would you say legal writing skills -- grammar, general English writing skills -- are important to succeed as a corporate lawyer?
What would be the important skills that you can start working on before graduating from law school?

My opinion as an M&A associate is yes, but if you judge from the emails my partners send, then the answer is not at all

I think detail-orientedness is really the most important. A lot of corporate work, especially in the first few years, is just being able to pay really close attention to tedious details and pick out problems/inconsistencies (such as poor grammar and punctuation). This may be an unpopular answer, but I think law review/journals are good experience for corporate lawyers. Reading pages and pages of boring material to look for commas and periods being out of place is basically what a first-year corporate associate does, so you might as well get good at it as a law student rather than figuring it out when it actually matters. The good news is that aspect of being a corporate associate eventually subsides and is replaced with more substantive tasks, but if you're not able to do a good job at the simple tasks in the beginning, you may not ever get asked to do the more challenging stuff because partners and seniors won't trust your quality of work.

This also sounds cheesy, but develop self-confidence and public speaking skills. I was asked to call up GCs and CEOs as a first-year attorney, and there were times when I was negotiating documents against partners at other huge firms with lots of people on the line listening (small documents like NDAs that partners shouldn't have been negotiating in the first place, but still). It was terrifying. I had a previous career where I had to work with powerful people regularly so I was able to swallow my nerves and get the job done, but some of my peers with less experience and less confidence have struggled with that and that has held them back. I actually think moot court/mock trial can be helpful in this regard. If you're able to stand in front of a judge as a law student, look them in the eye, and pull some BS argument out of thin air, you can do that on the phone with opposing counsel. If you can't stand to do litigation work, maybe join Toastmasters or some kind of local debate club or something.

[Anonymous User]

Thanks so much for the detailed insights. They are incredibly helpful.
I've also heard that organization and prioritization skills are really important, especially for junior associates.
How have you managed with organization and what tools have you used?

Litigators draft lots of memos and briefs but I believe corporate lawyers do not draft briefs/memos as much as litigators.

Would you say legal writing skills -- grammar, general English writing skills -- are important to succeed as a corporate lawyer?
What would be the important skills that you can start working on before graduating from law school?

My opinion as an M&A associate is yes, but if you judge from the emails my partners send, then the answer is not at all

I think detail-orientedness is really the most important. A lot of corporate work, especially in the first few years, is just being able to pay really close attention to tedious details and pick out problems/inconsistencies (such as poor grammar and punctuation). This may be an unpopular answer, but I think law review/journals are good experience for corporate lawyers. Reading pages and pages of boring material to look for commas and periods being out of place is basically what a first-year corporate associate does, so you might as well get good at it as a law student rather than figuring it out when it actually matters. The good news is that aspect of being a corporate associate eventually subsides and is replaced with more substantive tasks, but if you're not able to do a good job at the simple tasks in the beginning, you may not ever get asked to do the more challenging stuff because partners and seniors won't trust your quality of work.

This also sounds cheesy, but develop self-confidence and public speaking skills. I was asked to call up GCs and CEOs as a first-year attorney, and there were times when I was negotiating documents against partners at other huge firms with lots of people on the line listening (small documents like NDAs that partners shouldn't have been negotiating in the first place, but still). It was terrifying. I had a previous career where I had to work with powerful people regularly so I was able to swallow my nerves and get the job done, but some of my peers with less experience and less confidence have struggled with that and that has held them back. I actually think moot court/mock trial can be helpful in this regard. If you're able to stand in front of a judge as a law student, look them in the eye, and pull some BS argument out of thin air, you can do that on the phone with opposing counsel. If you can't stand to do litigation work, maybe join Toastmasters or some kind of local debate club or something.