As I finished my 32 page legal writing assignment, I realized how much law school had changed my attitude and expectations toward writing. I’ve never been adverse to writing, but I certainly didn’t consider it to be a hobby. I also had a much different opinion as to what constituted a “long” writing assignment, even after publishing articles related to mass spectrometry and bioinformatics as an undergraduate. Law school has changed all that, and for the better.

Writing as an (almost) hobby
As I mentioned above, I had never considered writing to be a hobby. I saw it as a necessary chore to be done for class credit, or as a necessary part of a bioinformatics and high performance computing research project.
Now I see it as an (almost) hobby. I say almost, because while I enjoy writing blog articles such as this, there are still other things I would rather do than write an appellate brief for legal writing. I would attribute this in no small part to law school, and the copious amount of writing that it has caused me to do. I now take joy in writing recreationally, and while my writing style lacks the eloquence that my favorite authors (including certain SCOTUS justices) possess, there is still a satisfaction that I get from expressing ideas online or in print form.

The definition of a “long” paper
My option of what constitutes a “long” paper has also changed due to law school. In high school, I considered a 5 page paper to be a seriously time intensive undertaking. As an undergraduate, that changed as I routinely write term papers of 8-10 pages, and a few bioinformatics and other research papers around 15 pages. In law school, I have routinely written 20-30 page papers, and now think nothing of it. This is due in no small part to the frequency with which such papers have been assigned. As an undergraduate, the “long” paper might be due at the end of the quarter; in law school the “long” paper is due in the third week of class… and then another is due in the 5th week… and so on.

The “hard part” about writing
One of the most striking changes I have noticed is that a word limit (as in the upper bound) is more challenging than a word minimum (as in a lower bound). Throughout high school and as an undergraduate, papers would usually have a word minimum, while in law school and beyond, there are word maximum. Although I once thought that having to meet a minimum word count requirement was difficult, I now see that the real difficulty is in meeting the maximum word count limit. This is because there are generally more things to say, more points to make, and more opposing arguments to rebut then the limit allows. Such word limits have benefits, such as ensuring that only the best arguments are made, and superfluous arguments are omitted. They also force the writer to omit unnecessary words and consider things like active voice versus passive voice, all of which adds to the difficulty level. In the end, though, I would say that such word limits (as in upper bounds) are for the best.

Looking back on my admittedly short writing career as a law student, and undergraduate, and a high school student, I laugh about how hard my English 103 term paper seemed during freshman year, and even at how I worried about my first legal writing assignment as a first year law student. Law school really does change everything.

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