Writing courses for law firms – five reasons why your firm’s writing might be failing
As we explain in our writing courses for lawyers, grabbing people’s attention has become more of a challenge than ever before. We have approximately 100,000 words beamed at us every day through conventional and social media, through emails and through advertising among other sources, according to research by the University of Southern California.
With this remarkable – and perhaps depressing – statistic in mind, how can law firms improve the writing capability of their PSLs and others to write more effectively. More and more law firms are coming to us for our writing courses for lawyers.
They want their teams to learn how to write quickly and effectively in a way that grabs attention and gets results, whether it’s a blog, a white paper, a LinkedIn post, a report, a note of a meeting or an email.
We provide PSLs, associates and partners who attend our writing workshops for law firms with a variety of structures, templates and checklists. They can then put these tools into practice immediately.
Given that we tend to learn from our mistakes, here are five reasons why lawyers might find that their business writing isn’t working.
1. They don’t focus on the audience.
Most of us have an idea of who we’re writing too when we start tapping away. But how many of us really focus on our audience – their hopes, fears and needs?
Identifying the messages that will resonate with your readers, be they your team members, clients, potential clients or other audiences is essential. Writing, like any communication, is most likely to go wrong when the writer assumes that whatever interests them will interest their readers.
This focus on the audience involves language too. In our writing courses for lawyers, we challenge the participants to think about how they would explain legal concepts to a non-legal audience. Remember, a that non-legal audience doesn’t care about the law – they just care about what it means for them.
We sometimes advise the participants in our writing courses for lawyers to write two versions of the same communication aimed at two different groups. This means that they can really focus on relevant key messages for each distinct audience.
2. They start with the background.
As we explain in our writing courses for law firms, when you start writing you have to work on the principle that nobody cares what you’re saying. That might sound harsh. However, unless you’re telling someone that they’ve won the lottery, or they’ve got a fatal disease, frankly they’re probably not that interested to hear from you. That means that you’re going to have to work hard to grab their attention.
All too often emails, reports and other written communication from lawyers start with the background and then come to the conclusion. Our writing coaches have journalistic backgrounds, so they advise our course participants: “Don’t start at the beginning. Start with what’s most important.”
Imagine that someone comes into a meeting and starts telling you about the history of the building that you’re in. They talk about the site when the current building was constructed, how it’s been refurbished and who’s been based there over the years before finally telling you something else about the building. It’s on fire and so you’d better leave now.
It’s probably safe to assume that you’d want to hear the last bit of information first.
We help the participants in our writing courses for lawyers, to define their most relevant key message (and it’s not always what they think it is). We then teach them to express it concisely and punchily. The background comes after this key point. We offer templates that help set out this important structure.
3. They forget to use examples and stories.
Using case studies and storytelling do three things – they grab the attention of your audience. They explain your point, prove your argument whilst also make your messages more memorable. According to researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business a story is up to twenty-two times more memorable than facts alone.
Meanwhile, research from the University of Liverpool suggests that up to 65 per cent of all conversations consist of stories. How often is every day conversation do we use phrases such as: “For instance…” or “Say…” or “Just imagine…”?
As we explain in our writing workshops for law firms, identifying relevant stories, telling them in a simple and concise way and then extracting the learning points from them will super-charge your writing.
4. They make it too long.
Stripping away unnecessary words and phrases and deleting information that isn’t directly relevant is remarkably satisfying, participants on our writing training courses for law firms tell us.
Good writing isn’t about adding everything you want, it’s about removing everything you can. “Kill your darlings,” as they say. This is particularly true, we find, in our email writing courses where grabbing attention, being concise and providing a clear call to action is essential. In our writing courses we offer templates and acronyms that help participants to distil their messages and structure emails to make them clearer, more concise – and shorter.
5. There’s no clear call to action.
We’ve all read an email, a work document or even a blog post and thought, “That’s interesting but what am I supposed to do now?”
In our writing training sessions for lawyers, we look at how, you can include a clear and compelling call for your reader. Do you want them to sign up for something? Buy something? To do something? To not do something? Change the way that they do something? Or do you want them to simply get in touch and discuss new business opportunities?
Whatever the aim of your writing, you need to be clear about your call to action.
How can you persuade them to take that action? In our writing workshops for law firms, we share a range of persuasion techniques based on psychological research.
Media Training for Lawyers
Come and talk to us about how our bespoke writing courses for lawyers can help your firm to communicate more successfully. (Notice that strong call to action!). You can follow us on LinkedIn here.
