So says the wonderful Bryan Garner in today’s LawProse Lesson.
Anything that can be thought can be written. That dictum is both challenge and liberation for the legal writer. If a concept can take shape in your mind—even faintly, even clumsily—it can be captured in words. Law thrives on precision, but precision starts with the audacity to express what seems unsayable. A writer who believes that every thought has verbal form never hides behind “it’s too complicated.” If you can think it, you can write it.
The difficulty usually isn’t the idea; it’s the fog around it. Lawyers often mistake mental blur for legal complexity. The cure isn’t jargon, but clarity. The discipline lies in breaking a tangled concept into short, declarative sentences until logic emerges into daylight. Language follows thought, and thought sharpens through writing. The page becomes the proving ground where vague notions either stand or collapse under scrutiny.
So next time your argument feels “impossible to phrase,” remember: that’s not failure but friction. It’s the mind’s way of demanding clearer thought. Keep chiseling. Write what you mean, then refine until every clause earns its keep. Legal writing isn’t transcription—it’s translation: turning reasoning into language that compels. When you hold nothing back in that translation, your thinking and your advocacy gain power.
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