The VBA Journal is the official publication of The Virginia Bar Association.
Issue link: http://vba.epubxp.com/i/815343
12 • VBA JOURNAL WRITER'S BLOCK If You've Seen One, You Have NOT Seen Them All M y 10-year-old was getting ready for Valentine's Day. Well, as much as a 10-year-old boy in fifth grade can. Each year, his elementary school class has a Valentine's party. Many of the valentines are store-bought with pictures of Spider Man, Princess Leia, or Pikachu emblazoned on them along with with stock phrases, such as "Tangled in your Web," "You Rule in my Galaxy," or "Glad I Caught this One." ese valentines convey the right message, but they are nothing special. Also, you might get four or five of the same ones from your classmates. ese kinds of valentines end up in a landfill. e kinds of valentines that end up in a scrapbook are homemade, each decoration carefully chosen and each greeting personally selected and tailored to its recipient. ese valentines endure and impress. ese are the valentines that you remember. Homemade valentines are like good legal writing. Each document a lawyer writes should be carefully crafted and specifically tailored to the individual client. Sure, you might borrow here and there from similar documents you wrote for other clients. And sure, at times boilerplate language might be necessary to meet a statutory requirement, but the end product should be based on what best serves your client in her specific case. Not all clients are created equal, and cookie-cutter thinking and lawyering presupposes that they are. More and more lawyers (and law students) rely on samples. Samples are prevalent. You can pretty much find an online sample for any type of legal document that you need to write. ese samples, however, are like the valentines that end up in the trash. ey are nothing special. No one pays them much attention, and although they sometimes get the job done, a lawyer should do more than phone in barely competent representation. Being a good lawyer means bringing your individual skill and expertise to bear in a particular case. Trying to fit your case into a sample results in awkward language, underdeveloped points, and paint- by-numbers lawyering. It's like shoving a puzzle piece into a space where it does not belong. Something looks amiss, something is not quite right … By George, I've got it! I saw this same document on a pre-printed form in Office Depot, where you apparently can buy a "lawyer." Overreliance on samples by my first-year law students is quite honestly the bane of my existence as a professor. Because students are writing memos and briefs for the first time, it BY DAVID H. SPRATT PROFESSOR, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY