Recommended Legal Writing Reads from Judge Easterbrook

This past October, as a Judicial Intern at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, I had the pleasure of attending an informal, reoccurring brown bag lunch held among the court’s clerks. We gathered in a conference room down the hall from the Dirksen Federal Building’s second-floor cafeteria to hear this session’s guest speaker—Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook—lecture informally on legal writing. The judge shared some of his experiences (e.g., his decision-making process*) and his must-read books for legal writers.

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On Opportunity

A good friend of mine once told me that hitting the ball into the sand trap on the golf course should be looked at in one way, and one way only: an opportunity — an opportunity to get better at something that you may not excel at, but nonetheless must be able to master to become great.

Opportunities abound.  Everyone, regardless of profession, has opportunities to do something in this world that is important.  The problem as I see it, is that all too often people are too afraid to see the opportunities in front of them. They figure their ball went into the bunker,  and they have no way to get out.

As practitioners of the law, we have a very unique opportunity to help people.

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How Women Lawyers Avoid the Likeability v. Competence Trap

In a series of recent papers, Andrea Schneider has explored the “likeabilty v. competence” trap that seems to confront many women in leadership and professional positions.  In her view, the trap is typefied by media coverage of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the 2008 election.  Clinton was commonly portrayed as competent, but unlikeable, and Palin the reverse.

Now, Andrea has a new paper that discusses some of her own empirical research showing that women lawyers seem largely to avoid the trap, at least in negotiation settings.  She and her coauthors consider why this might be and how women lawyers might avoid the trap in other settings. 

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