You’re a Lawyer, but Are You an Author?
Exploring the Lawyer’s Hidden Voice Through Writing
By trade, you interpret statutes, draft contracts, dissect case law, and argue your point with precision. But here’s a question worth pausing for: you’re a lawyer—but are you an author?
At first glance, the distinction might seem semantic. After all, lawyers write constantly. But the difference lies not in quantity, but in intention. Legal writing serves clients, courts, and colleagues. Authorship, on the other hand, serves readers—through insight, persuasion, reflection, or even imagination.
The Lawyer’s Writing Muscle: Strong, Yet Restrained
Legal writing is a discipline governed by clarity, logic, and precedent. It’s purposeful, but often constrained by formality and audience expectations. Being an author—whether of essays, op-eds, fiction, or memoir—calls on a different register: your voice. Not the institutional voice of a brief, but your personal point of view.
You already possess many of the core skills: argumentation, narrative structure, and analytical rigor. But to cross into authorship, you need to loosen your grip. You must be willing to say I, to speculate, to question, to create.
Why Should Lawyers Write Like Authors?
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Thought Leadership: Whether it’s a blog post on AI and ethics or a think piece on judicial reform, writing as an author positions you as more than a technician. It positions you as a thinker.
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Personal Fulfillment: Practicing law can be consuming. Writing outside that world can become a space of reflection, clarity, and even therapy.
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Career Growth and Visibility: The lawyers who write books, contribute op-eds, or host legal storytelling podcasts are often the ones invited to speak, teach, and lead.
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Changing the Narrative: Many parts of law—criminal justice, immigration, civil rights—need not just good practitioners, but powerful storytellers. If you’ve seen injustice up close, you have a duty (and platform) to shed light on it.
What Could You Write?
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Nonfiction: Memoirs, essays, legal commentary, explainers for the public.
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Fiction: Legal thrillers, courtroom dramas, or even speculative fiction drawing from legal ethics or dystopian regulation.
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Creative Nonfiction: Narratives based on real cases, client stories, or your own journey in law.
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Articles and Opinion Pieces: Demystify legal issues for lay audiences.
Common Mental Blocks—and How to Overcome Them
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“I’m not a real writer.” You write daily. Authorship is not a title you earn—it’s a practice you adopt.
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“I don’t have time.” You don’t need to write a novel. A blog post every month, or a LinkedIn article every quarter, is a start.
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“What if it’s not perfect?” You’re trained to aim for precision. Authorship requires vulnerability. Write badly first—revise later.
Where to Begin
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Read beyond legal texts. Let your language breathe.
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Join a writing group—many exist for professionals.
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Consider courses on creative nonfiction or legal storytelling.
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Start small: Medium, Substack, LinkedIn. Your audience will grow.
You’ve mastered the law. Now what will you say beyond it?
The world needs more lawyers who write—not just to interpret the law, but to humanize it. To illuminate the gray areas. To tell the stories that don’t fit neatly into briefs or bench decisions. If you have the voice, the experience, and the conviction, then yes—you’re a lawyer, but you may already be an author.
All that’s left is to begin.
