I am playing with the idea of writing a book about writing skills for lawyers. This is the table of contents I could use. If anyone as suggestions to improve it, be my guest!
1. ABOUT WRITTEN COMMUNICATION
- Why is writing very important?
- Why is writing no so important?
- What is the definition of excellence in writing?
- What do 99% of clients expect from written advice?
- When to use writing vs. other communication channels?
- How to integrate writing in a global communication to client?
2. CREATING VALUE THROUGH WRITING
- What is the #1 condition to create client value in documents?
- What is the biggest mistake of lawyers about the value of their documents?
- What differentiates excellence criteria from basic requirements?
- Why do lawyers focus on the wrong excellence indicators?
- What is the top criteria to assess whether a document is creating value?
- How to discover what sort of documents your client really want?
- What does "solution-oriented" mean?
- How to make documents more useful in practice?
3. STRUCTURE
- Why must lawyers turn structure upside down?
- How to structure documents?
- How to structure paragraphs?
- Ho to create powerful headings and sub-headings?
- How to structure long documents?
- When and how to use executive summaries?
4. STYLE
4.1 Concision
- Why is concise writing essential?
- How to write in a short, concise way?
- How long should documents be?
- How long should paragraphs be?
- How long should sentences be?
- How to get rid of useless stuff?
4.2 Clarity
- How to increase clarity of ideas?
- How to increase clarity of language?
- How to increase clarity of layout?
- When and how to use tables, flow charts and graphs?
- Why and how to avoid vague, ambiguous language?
4.3 Plain language
- Is writing in "plain language" a good idea?
- What is the story beyond "plain English"?
- How sophisticated should be your writing?
4.4 House style
- What should house style be about?
- How to move house style from wishful thinking to consistent performance?
- How to balance house style and personal style?
5. THE WRITING PROCESS
- How to get prepared for writing?
- How to produce a draft?
- How to do effective editing?
- How to check spelling and grammar?
- How to use readibility statistics?
6. SPECIFIC WRITING
- What are the top tips for writing emails?
- What are the the top tips for writing legal briefs?
- What are the top tips for writing newsletters?
- What are the top tips for writing articles?
7. META-WRITING
- Why does it take more than writing skills to produce outstanding documents?
- How to reconcile effective writing and protection of professional liability?
- How to combine shorter documents and higher fees?
- Why is effective writing a team performance?
- Why does it take change management to implement excellence in writing?
- How to use writing to create a distinctive, innovative and attractive identity for the firm?
Antoine Henry de Frahan
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