Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Spring 2015, Vol. 41, No. 1 | Page 35

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1
See Reed Dickerson, Legal Drafting: Writing as Thinking, or, Talk-Back From Your Draft
and How to Exploit It, 29 J. Legal Educ. 373,
375 (1978)(“The central idea here is that in the
course of writing, the author, after what may
seem like trying to strike a damp match, soon
finds that he is a party to a two-way conversation
with what he has put on paper.”)
2
Laurel Currie Oates, Beyond Communication:
Writing as a Means of Learning, 6 J. Legal Writing Inst. 1 (2000) (“Writing is not only a means of
communication but also a means of learning.”)
3
S.I. Hayakawa, writing in the Chicago Tribune,
sec.1, Aug. 12, 1977, at p. 14 asked, “Why is it
that I don’t feel I have understood a difficult theory until I can write it in a way that everyone can
understand?”
4
Mary Beth Beazley &Monte Smith, Legal Writing for Readers 115 (2014): “Hearing your critical
voice [when writing] is not a bad thing in itself
... [w[riting is a method of thinking and of learning ... you should presume that your first couple of drafts will be ‘thinking drafts’ or ‘learning
drafts’ that will teach you a lot about your case.”
See also LeJanet Emig, Writing as a Mode of

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Learning, 6 College Composition & Comm. 340 n.
4 (1977). Of course, legal writing can also create
feelings of “ecstasy” when well done, but to get
to experience such ecstasy a lawyer invariably
must endure the “agony” of the writing process.
5
“The man of the law works with language
at every turn ... Now he is using language ... in
framing a deed, will, contract, or pleading; now
in eliciting the testimony of witnesses or making an argument to the jury or issuing an order;
now in writing or reading an opinion; now in reporting a case or referring to a case already reported; now in interpreting a statute; now in preparing and writing a treatise or article on some
special branch of the law.” Burke Shartel & B.J.
George, Readings in Legal Methods 1 (1959).
6
Dickerson, supra note 1, at 376: “The lesson
for legal writing is clear. Do not try to do all your
research first. Instead, begin to write as soon as
you have a fairly good idea of what your problem is.” See also M. Learner, On the Art of Reading and Writing, Indianapolis Star, Feb. 14, 1977.
“Training in writing ... is a way of discovering
things we didn’t know were in our minds ... How
will we know what to think until we see what we
have written?”
7
Dickerson, supra note 1, at 377.
8
A New Affliction at the Prestige Schools: Elite
Illiteracy, 77 Brown Alumni Monthly 12, 15 n. 1
(Oct. 1976) (exploring the theories of Brown University’s Professor A.D. Van Nostrand). “People
acquire knowledge about any subject simply by
writing about it. They do so by being forced to

THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • SPRING 2015

perceive relationships among the data that pertain to the subject.” See also Dickerson, supra
note 1, at 375 n. 7.
9
New Affliction, supra note 8, at 17: “Writing is
an aspect of dialogue, rather than merely monologue ... an act of communication