August 2, 2010

Day 203 - Write a Letter to a Judge

Date: July 28th, 2010

I'm promising this is the last work entry unless and until I actually stand up in a court of law, before a judge, and argue a case.  Until that point, work stays at work and blog stays at, well, blog.  See, I get that there is a lot of redundancy in the work entries and on a project about doing new things, that sure doesn't make a lot of sense.  For me, each of these little, different tasks has been worlds apart from the one before.  But, for the most part, a letter is a letter is a letter.

As for my letter to the judge, well, the thing that was different about it was that I had to focus on what the judge would think.  One of the things that I learned early on in law school is that everything is discoverable.  Yeah, there are rules against sharing attorney work product and whatnot, but just to be on the safe side, its still best to avoid dropping the f*bomb in your letters.  No matter how annoying opposing counsel may be.

What I also learned, along the same lines, is that letters between attorneys aren't as much information sharing as they are posturing.  It is just as important to make opposing counsel view your information a certain way as it is to present it in the first place.  I found that there was a lot less posturing in my judge's letter because I knew going in that I was writing it for the judge to read.  I wasn't crafting anything or laying out an argument - just making a single, straightforward, well-researched point.  Though scary (since a judge would be reading my writing), it was actually much simpler than other letters.

Ok.  Now, I did something new and I learned something.  I promise no more work entries unless they're epic.

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