Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: How to approach legal writing

It sounds like a different version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, doesn’t it? I came across this formulation for how to approach legal writing recently in Bryan A Gardner’s book Legal Writing In Plain English (taken from an essay written by the poet Betty Sue Flowers in 1997, entitled Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles in the Writing Process).

The four steps brilliantly encapsulate the approach I have always taken to writing. They are:

1.   Think of things you want to say—as many as possible, as quickly as possible (the Madman).

2.   Figure out a sensible order to those thoughts, and outline them (the Architect).

3.   With the outline as your guide, write a draft (the Carpenter).

4.   After setting aside the draft for some time, come back to it and edit it (the Judge).

When drafting pleadings years ago I used to brainstorm my case theory and capture it in three or four sentences. Then I would write the structure of the pleading, then draft, then polish. Now I have a great way to express those stages of writing: Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge.

I occasionally teach legal writing and in reviewing students’ writing it is telling when one of the stages has been missed out: it doesn’t matter which one but if a stage is not there, the writing is inferior. I have always placed emphasis on the polishing stage, but if you break down the approach into separate stages, you can see that each stage is equally important. To state the obvious: if the content hasn’t been correctly identified and captured then no amount of polishing is going to improve the draft, similarly if the structure is lacking then it is going to be harder to express the content coherently.

Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge - one to remember when approaching legal writing.