During a training contract you will carry out all sorts of writing and drafting. We’ve asked leading City writing and drafting trainer John Trimbos to include his top tips throughout this section, so look out for the purple boxes.
Check out our Writing professionally course for more comprehensive guidance from John Trimbos on writing professionally in a business and legal context, including top tips on proofreading, punctuation, decluttering your writing, presenting information effectively, writing key business documents, and legal drafting.
John Trimbos' top tips for writing professionally
It is often useful to think in terms of wearing a “writing” hat and a “drafting” hat. By “writing”, we mean corresponding with clients, writing newsletters, writing press articles and news summaries etc. In these contexts, the idea is to explain legal concepts in clear, reader-friendly language.
In contrast, “drafting” involves defining legal rights, obligations, conditions, time limits, contractual promises, pleadings etc., although at the junior level, “drafting” might also mean incorporating or reflecting your supervisor’s (or a client’s) instructions or intentions within a variety of legal documents. Drafting requires a much stricter approach and unwavering attention to detail; you must strive for clarity, avoiding ambiguity at all costs, as failure to do so can result in both legal and financial liability – not to mention reputational damage – for the firm.
Style and Structure
Accuracy
It goes without saying, but spelling, grammar and punctuation are key. You cannot fully rely on the Microsoft Word spell checker, so always proofread multiple times (preferably having had a few hours away from the relevant documents between drafting and proofreading). Avoid basic grammatical mistakes at all costs; allow yourself only to be criticised for stylistic mistakes you couldn’t have known about, and never make the same mistake twice.
John Trimbos: typical words that slip through the net with spell checker are principle/principal, discreet/discrete and public/pubic. Also look out for small words like is/it/in, of/on and as/at. Also, make sure you always check that parties’ names and addresses are spelt correctly, numbers/figures are accurate, dates are correct and emails are correctly entered into the “To:” and “Cc:” boxes. These are common, easily-avoidable mistakes!
Clarity
Avoid particularly long sentences and paragraphs, as these can confuse the reader and create ambiguities. Also avoid legal jargon and unnecessary (or unnecessarily long) words. Clients and supervisors want to read documents in plain English and will regularly read your work on their phones, so complex, protracted sentences can be unhelpful. Keeping sentences and sub-paragraphs short and using definitions to avoid repetition can help to make your drafting clearer, more concise and easier to digest. Always ask yourself whether what you have written could be misinterpreted or seen as ambiguous; if so, try again.
John Trimbos: the two rules of thumb are: one main idea per sentence, and one theme/topic per paragraph.
Structure
Ultimately, the recipient should be able to pick up the essential information on a quick skim of the text, and structure is key to achieving this. Breaking up blocks of text into short paragraphs (or breaking up clauses into numbered lists) can help to improve structure, and thus clarity. Using headings, bullet points and sub-clauses can also help, although overuse of these could break up the document too much.
Practical tip: remember to include “and” or “or” at the end of the penultimate entry in a list (failure to do so is a common legal drafting error). The difference is important: “and” suggests all the elements of the list are required, where “or” suggests only one element is required.
Style
The style of your document can reflect strongly on you as the creator of that document, especially if the firm has its own “house style”.
House style refers to a system of formatting and structuring documents that is designated by a firm in order to ensure its output remains visually consistent to recipients. Most City firms will have their own house style and will likely place great importance on their employees adhering to this. For example, firms may have particular ways of expressing dates or numbers (e.g. writing out numbers one to ten, then using numerical figures for 11 onwards). Some might insist that “LLP” is written after the firm name. Many now address documents to “Dear Sir or Madam” as standard. Some use commas after email salutations. Some prescribe certain fonts, spacing and styles for headings and bullet points. And so on. Law firms love their own house styles, so when proofreading documents produced by your firm, check that house style is adhered to at all times.
For example, check to see whether there are particular fonts, templates or settings that should be used to conform with the firm’s house style and where possible, adhere to these. For example, there may be house style-compliant templates of contracts, spreadsheets or slide decks that you can use as a starting point. This can demonstrate your ability to absorb and work in a way that aligns with the ways in which the firm operates, whilst also ensuring the people judging your work will approve of it stylistically. If you’re not sure what the firm’s house style entails (or whether templates exist), check the firm’s intranet for guidance, pay attention to the approach taken by more experienced lawyers, and ask your colleagues.
With this in mind, below are some of the inconsistencies and mistakes that you should look out for when it comes to checking house style.
Practical tip: before sending off a long document to your supervisor, control+f “; or” and “; and” to quickly check whether your lists are correct after amending a document. It’s easy to cut, paste and move around a list while forgetting to move the punctuation intended for the penultimate line of that list.
Beware, if you’re working on a document that has been based on another firm’s house style, you will probably be expected to conform to their house style. Don’t completely change another firm’s document unless you have been explicitly told to do so.
Recipients
As explained by Journalist, Novelist, Creative Writing Lecturer, and Royal Literary Fund Fellow Shelley Weiner (www.shelleyweiner.com): “The ingredient that can intangibly lift your writing from the workmanlike to the influential is creativity. If clarity and coherence are the how and what of good written communication, then creativity is the who. And since writing is about people – it has to be; in its various forms it is the most advanced means of communication we have – understanding the who of your document is crucial.
When it comes to the who, there are two aspects to consider: 1. Who are you writing to? and 2. Who are you writing as? The first is obvious. If you are addressing a letter to a client, try and imagine them, much as a novelist would imagine a character in fiction. Consider their level of understanding, state of mind, age perhaps. There is no need to patronise or kowtow – simply have your audience in mind as you write and adjust the tone appropriately.
The second aspect you may dismiss as ridiculously self-evident. Don’t. Clearly, if it’s a work-related document, you are writing as a lawyer. Think on, though. As a respected lawyer, would you, in your professional life, use platitudes or colloquialism or the kind of language that you might privately employ? We all juggle with several roles and sometimes the language appropriate for one (your mate/parent/child) can slip into another. Being clearly aware of the particular voice you’re using at a particular time calls for imagination. Particularly when you don’t feel like a successful junior lawyer but you have to write like one.”
With this in mind, your tone, style, presentation and level of detail should depend on your intended recipient. For instance, if writing for a client, you would usually want to avoid legal jargon, acronyms and legal references, and produce a note that is concise, to the point and easily-digestible. In contrast, you may be expected to include technical legal information, give more detail and provide references if writing a research note for another lawyer.
" } }