<p>I am interested in business and possibly going into corporate law, for like mergers and acquisitons and things. The problem is I do not enjoy writing very long things, the longest thing I have written was about 121 pages, but that was a novel over a period of time. Is my adversion to substanial writing mean that law school is not for me? I understand that the vast majority of law particular corporate finance would be research/writing, does law school effectively help in writing, or is writing lengthy documents a prerequiste? Any input would be helpful thanks!</p>
<p>No personal experience to speak from, but I remembered an old thread on the topic:</p>
<p>lawyers often communicate with other lawyers, their clients, the courts, other governmental bodies, etc. through writing. writing is an essential part of the job.</p>
<p>the most important skill is to be able to effectively communicate your conclusion or positions in clear compelling succinct matter. sometimes it is your job to inform (eg writing to client or senior attorney), sometimes it is to pursuade (eg. writing for a court). </p>
<p>the type of writing is probably different than anything you've done before. the merit of the writing isn't judged by length -- the people you are writing for generally don't have the time or desire to be bogged down with more length and extraneous detail than is necessary. but then again, just writing, "the applicable law is X" generally isn't enough. its a real skill to learn -- to write enough to explain, but not too much that your point gets lost (sometimes when you've read dozens of cases to come to a conclusion, its hard to convince yourself that you really don't need to thoroughly explain ALL of them when you are writing your conclusion ;) ).</p>
<p>the ultimate length of what you need to write will vary based on what it is you are writing. some issues/cases are more complicated and a lengthy memo/brief will be necessary to address all the issues.</p>
<p>The only really lengthy writing I did in law school were my law review articles. But even then, it's the footnotes that kill you (perhaps 180+ footnote in my Comment).</p>
<p>Many exams are totally essay-and it's the only grade you get in the class.</p>
<p>In M&A work, you'd be doing "drafting" vs. writing long things. For example, you might spend an hour getting one paragraph just right.</p>
<p>Your question about writing in law school is similar to a prospective med student asking "Is there much blood and guts involved?"</p>
<p>Oh god. Footnotes. I have to read some supreme court cases for my undergrad Admin class, so I printed them off of FindLaw. Each opinion's like 20 pages long, 12 of which is footnotes for the majority and dissenting opinions.</p>
<p>Actually, with most legal writing, -- opinions, memoranda and briefs -- you don't usually have many footnotes because all the case citations and support go into the body of the text. The reference above is to footnotes in legal articles where you will find huge numbers of footnotes -- citations and other referenced support that usually go into the body of an opinion, memorandum or brief, go into footnotes when doing legal articles. </p>
<p>The US Supreme Court is notorious for footnoting almost anything and often the judges negotiate with each other over whether something should be in the body of the opinion or a footnote or, even more often, negotiate over whether something should be left out of the opinion entirely or allow it to at least make a footnote. Also 20 page opinions are "short" for the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>In law school, you have certain classes that require a lot of writing that you turn in -- legal writing courses usually in freshman year and then later a trial practice course. Most final exams are written (and the final is the only thing you ever turn in for the class and the only thing that determines your grade). You do a lot of writing for your own use including course outlines and case outlines. You must learn to write well or you will face doing poorly on those final exams. Where a lot of writing does occur is if you make law review or do moot court. Also, once you are a lawyer, you can easily end up writing large amounts of materials with many pages (and that is just on Monday ...). In law school you sepnd far more hourse studying for the next day in a class which can often consist, first year, of reading only 20 pages of abstracted case opinions and questions and after 9 hours of trying to figure out what those 20 pages say, you actually think you got it. Then you go to class the next day, the prof goes to you and starts asking some questions to see if you learned anything and can use it and after about a minute into that exchange you realize that you spent nine hours reviewing 20 pages and still don't understand them at all.</p>