Coaching Services

Susan Feibus provides sustained, personalized legal writing coaching that law firms and in-house law departments cannot replicate internally - especially in the post-Covid era of remote work. Partners or supervisors may be great writers, but most do not have the time or inclination to invest in improving other lawyers’ legal writing. Partner/supervisor feedback typically is limited to redline edits (often at the eleventh hour) which do not show lawyers (especially junior ones) how to improve their future work. The result is disappointing work product that does not get better and demoralized lawyers. 

Susan’s personalized coaching can achieve what busy partners/supervisors cannot.  She offers practical advice, beyond redline edits, that helps lawyers master each stage of the writing process from outlining, writing first drafts, editing and proofreading. Because of her coaching experience and decades of writing and editing motions and briefs, herself, Susan is expert at identifying and diagnosing writing issues.

By working with Susan, lawyers can:

• Master pre-writing practices and processes

• Embrace taut organization, clarity and conciseness

• Strengthen self-editing and proofreading skills

• Overcome writing time wasters

• Hurdle over writer’s block

• Enjoy writing, not just having written

The benefits to law firms and in-house law departments from Susan’s personalized coaching are many:

• Eliminated or decreased write-offs

• Better first drafts from the lawyer to partners/supervisors

• Less partner/supervisor time reviewing/revising work product

• Improved retention since otherwise talented lawyers won’t need to be dismissed because of deficient writing skills

• Improved retention from improved morale because of better work product

• Improved retention by giving top performers the opportunity to take their legal writing to the next level

• Recruitment of better candidates from demonstrated commitment to lawyer training

WriteRight’s coaching program is based on personalized one-on-one coaching using the lawyer’s current or completed writing projects.  Susan provides detailed redline edits with specific explanations and summaries of her suggestions for improvement. The number of sessions per lawyer is flexible.

Coaching Process

Susan’s typical coaching process involves:

• Initial meeting is to establish rapport, discuss the lawyer’s writing process, obstacles and expectations, and responsible use of AI and LLMs

• Confidential review of short samples of work product (memoranda, briefs, agreements, substantive correspondence) on which the lawyer is working or completed drafts before partners/supervisors edited

• Providing preliminary evaluation and suggestions for compelling legal writing based on the writing samples via redline editing with explanations

• Meetings to critique the lawyer’s completed or ongoing assignments via redline editing and explanations, which the lawyer provides prior to the meeting, and to explain strategies to enhance writing process

• Meetings may include strategies to enhance clarity and effectiveness of correspondence and email and navigating diverse partner/supervisor writing styles

Meetings typically last about one hour.

A Word About AI

The rise of AI makes made one-on-one legal writing coaching more important, not less.  AI may be a good editor, but it is unsuitable and inherently risky for first drafts.  Without a cogent first draft AI is filling a blank page – and filling it with whatever sounds right.  AI-generated first drafts lack the lawyer’s analytical voice, strategic choices, and knowledge of the case.  One-on-one legal writing coaching enables lawyers to produce the necessary first draft.