Legal Writing

Once, while training at a manufacturing site of a Fortune 100 company, I had trouble persuading my trainees to stop revising and editing while they were drafting. They insisted, "Here, we work hard to get it right the first time."

I realized that these managers saw me as just a crazy consultant who was clueless about their strong quality-oriented corporate culture. But for once, I knew what to do. The plant where I was working made printers, so I asked the managers to tell me the story of how their company developed and manufactured a new printer model.

They proceeded to describe an elaborate planning process, culminating in the building of a prototype. At this point in their story, I interrupted. "And you make sure to put the company's nameplate on that first printer?" I asked. "And you make sure to have the color of the finish just right? Because you're eventually going to sell it, right?"

The managers laughed. "Of course not," they said. "That printer is a prototype. It's not built to sell; it's built just to test."

"Ah ha!" I gloated. "So you don't do it right the first time. Because you know you won't sell the prototype, it doesn't have to be perfect. Making it perfect--with the right nameplate and paint and all--would be a huge waste of time and would distract you from the more important features that have to be tested."

Please understand; such flashes of insight are rare for me. But that day my trainees had given me a powerful new metaphor. A draft is a prototype. It's not the final product. It's not written for the reader. It's written for the writer. It's "quick and dirty." It's written to test. It's written to see if it does what it was designed to do.

This week, when you write, make sure you build a prototype. By doing so, and by then testing it, you'll be sure of having a better final product.