Ed. Note: This article is the first of five installments in our Writing to Persuade: An Appellate Lawyer’s Guide to Legal Writing series. Part Two will be published on August 10.
If there’s one thing that separates effective legal writers from the rest, it’s not vocabulary, clever analogies, or even the number of citations. It’s credibility.
After more than a decade handling appeals in federal and state courts, I’ve learned that your reputation for accuracy and honesty, on the page, can be your strongest asset or your biggest liability.
Whether you’re writing your first appellate brief or your hundredth, your legal writing must persuade without pushing too hard. The most respected advocates don’t just argue; they guide. And courts are more likely to follow those they trust.
In this article, I share practical, experience-based strategies for maintaining credibility in legal writing because in today’s digital legal landscape, your words are permanent, searchable, and scrutinized by judges, court staff, opposing counsel, and yes, even reporters.
Legal Writing Begins and Ends with Trust
Judges don’t just read briefs for legal analysis; they read them to assess you. Are you a reliable narrator? Do you help them understand the issues without spin or exaggeration? Do you acknowledge complexity rather than pretend it doesn’t exist? If the answer is yes, you’re far more likely to get the benefit of the doubt. The concept of the “reliable narrator,” borrowed from literary theory, captures something essential about how judges evaluate counsel. Just as readers instinctively trust a storyteller who presents facts honestly and consistently, judges extend the same trust to lawyers whose briefs demonstrate restraint and intellectual honesty.
Getting that benefit is critical when you’re new to a court. You don’t yet have a track record, so your brief has to do double duty: present strong legal arguments and show the court that you’re someone it can trust. But trust doesn’t come from aggressive advocacy or clever wordplay. It comes from restraint: from not overstating the case, not hiding unfavorable facts, and not stretching evidence beyond what it can reasonably bear. The persuasive advocate is not the loudest or the most technically clever; it is the one the decision-maker trusts.
If you’re already a familiar face in the courtroom, the stakes may be even higher. A single lapse in candor can undo years of careful reputation-building. Once an advocate loses credibility, the ability to persuade doesn’t just weaken: it collapses. Judges have long memories, and your reputation follows you from case to case. Every brief you file either reinforces or erodes the trust you’ve established.
This principle extends beyond your own credibility to how you present your client’s story. Judges assess not just whether you are credible, but whether your client is credible—and your brief is the lens through which they form that impression. Present your facts honestly, acknowledge weaknesses early, and let the strength of the case emerge from the evidence itself. A brief that reads like advocacy without agenda is far more persuasive than one that reads like a press release.
How Legal Writers Undermine Themselves
Before discussing how to build credibility, let’s pause to think about ways to undermine it. One way to damage your credibility is through overstatement.
I see this mistake often, especially in briefs from less experienced advocates. It’s tempting to use intensifiers to strengthen your argument. But here’s the reality: if you’re in court, your case is probably not “clear,” and your opponent is probably not “obviously” wrong. So think carefully before you overstate your case to spice up your brief.
Here are some common missteps:
- Overusing Absolutes: Words like “always,” “never,” and “clearly” often signal weak analysis. If your position is so self-evident, you shouldn’t need to say so.
- Strawman Arguments: Mischaracterizing your opponent’s case is a short-term tactic that backfires. Judges notice. Opposing counsel will call it out. And your argument will suffer.
- Selective History: Be honest about procedural history. Courts may rely on your summary, especially in busy state court systems where judges cycle through many cases.
- Excessive Emphasis: Overuse of emphatic adverbs (“obviously,” “undoubtedly”) suggests you’re trying to compensate for a shaky point.
One misstep deserves special mention: the ad hominem attack. An ad hominem is a personal attack on your adversary. To be sure, if you’re in an evidentiary hearing, you are likely to attack the opposing party as being biased or untrustworthy. But in written submissions, one of the fastest ways to lose credibility is to attack opposing counsel personally. As Judge Karen Stevenson, a magistrate judge in the Central District of California, wrote in an ABA publication, “nothing diminishes a lawyer’s credibility like briefing that includes ad hominem attacks on opposing counsel[.]” The impulse to fight fire with fire is understandable when you’re dealing with difficult opposing counsel—but judges notice when you take the low road. No matter how unruly the other side may be, take the high ground and stick to the issues.
How to Build and Preserve Your Credibility
So if overstatements and personal attacks hurt your credibility, what builds it? The answer may be surprising.
To start, empirical evidence suggests that your writing style, particularly writing in “plain English,” builds trust. In a study published in The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, attorney Sean Flammer surveyed 800 judges across the country and found that judges preferred plain English writing over traditional legalese by a margin of 66 percent to 34 percent. Notably, the preference held across all cohorts: federal and state judges, trial and appellate judges, urban and rural courts, and judges of varying ages and experience levels. Perhaps more striking, a related study published in the Loyola of Lost Angeles Law Review concluded that judges believed that authors who wrote in plain English were more believable, better educated, and worked for more prestigious law firms. In other words, judges associate clear writing with professional competence.
Another way to build credibility is to be honest about your case’s weaknesses. Great legal writers know how to be both persuasive and balanced. That means knowing which arguments to pursue, and which to drop. It means acknowledging a weak point without giving up your whole case. In fact, this kind of intellectual honesty enhances your credibility. It shows the court that you’re thinking critically, not just advocating blindly.
Sometimes, credibility starts with doing the basics well:
- Quote Accurately and in Context: Use direct quotations instead of paraphrases when stakes are high. Don’t take shortcuts with your sources.
- Double-Check Your Citations: Make sure every case or statute you cite supports the point you’re making. The Mata v. Avianca, Inc., debacle, where fake citations from ChatGPT led to sanctions, should be a cautionary tale for all of us.
- Follow Technical Rules: Monitor court rules and formatting requirements. It might seem minor, but compliance signals expertise and credibility. Judges notice these violations. Don’t let a font size issue or an incorrect margin distract from your argument.
- Build in Time for Self-Editing: Implement a robust review process to review your work. I use a 24-hour rule: set the brief aside and come back with fresh eyes. I also use Microsoft Word’s “read aloud” feature, which helps me catch awkward phrasing and typos. Try one or both these tactics, and you’ll be surprised what stands out the second time.
- Know the Applicable Legal Standard: One surprisingly common mistake is citing summary judgment cases when briefing a motion to dismiss (or vice versa). When judges see this, they wonder whether the lawyer understands the distinction, or whether the lawyer assumes the court won’t notice. Neither impression helps your cause. Before you cite any case, make sure it applies the same legal standard as the motion before the court.
- Disclose Adverse Authority: ABA Model Rule 3.3(a)(2) requires lawyers to disclose controlling authority that is directly adverse to their client’s position if opposing counsel hasn’t disclosed it. But doing so is more than an ethical obligation, it’s a credibility-building exercise. Addressing unfavorable authority head-on shows the court that you’re a reliable narrator. Judges will discover adverse authority eventually; it’s far better for them to learn about it from you, along with your reasoned argument for why it doesn’t control.
Final Word: Every Brief Builds (or Breaks) Your Brand
If you want to deepen your understanding of persuasive legal writing, several resources can help. Ross Guberman’s Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation’s Top Advocates offers practical techniques drawn from the briefs of the country’s best legal writers. Camille Lamar Campbell and Olympia Duhart’s Persuasive Legal Writing: A Storytelling Approach provides another valuable framework. And for empirical insights into what judges actually prefer, consider reading Sean Flammer’s study, “Persuading Judges: An Empirical Analysis of Writing Style, Persuasion, and the Use of Plain English,” published in The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute.
For law firm leaders and supervisors, credibility should be part of associate training from day one. Consider building a brief bank of well-written filings that demonstrate the principles discussed here. Conduct regular writing workshops that focus not just on legal analysis but on clarity, concision, and accurate citation practice. And when reviewing junior associates’ work, explain why certain writing choices undermine credibility, not just what to fix.
Each filing you submit is more than a one-off document: it’s a brick in the house you’re building with the court. Trust is cumulative. So is doubt.
