A Draft is Never a Draft
How to Proofread Like a Pro In Four Easy Steps
Happy Friday!
At this point in your summer, you’ve probably realized that when a supervisor asks you for a “draft,” what they really mean is a final, high-quality document. Although this might not always be the most efficient workflow management technique, it is an expectation in pretty much every legal office I have ever encountered.
To be fair, as a summer associate/intern you might not always nail the content, organization, or strategic choices for a legal document. But what you can control is making sure that the document doesn’t have mindless typos. This is important because whether you like it or not when a reader sees technical errors, they are going to assume the argument has technical errors too.
To be fair, the best way to find a typo is to submit a piece of writing (ask me about my college senior thesis in the religion department, which included a quote about profits) but here are four techniques to limit typos to the absolute minimum:
Read the Document Aloud. I don’t know why this works but by reading a document out loud you have to slow down in a way which forces your eye to see what is on the page instead of what your eye thinks is on the page. If you want to take this to the next level try to read the piece in a different accent.
Print It Out. This accomplishes a similar goal. By reading a document in a different medium I find it is much easier to catch mistakes.
Read in Stages. When it comes to reviewing a piece of your own writing it is almost impossible to catch all errors at the same time: substance, organization, style. My suggestion is to read the piece more than once (but more quickly!), and for each read only focus on one task.
Get Someone Else to Read It (If You Can). For especially important pieces there is no better way to get feedback than to get it from someone else. Of course, you have to be cognizant of confidentiality concerns (see “Confidentiality is King”), but so long as you can find someone else from your law firm who is not conflicted off the case such as a fellow summer associate you can and should ask for feedback not just on the big things but on the little things too.
BONUS: Use AI. If your firm or organization allows it (and especially if your firm or organization has an internal AI product) copy-and-paste your document with a simple prompt like: “Please serve as a copy editor. Focus only on correcting technical errors such as spelling, grammar, word choice, and sentence length. Identify any technical errors and make concrete suggestions for how to fix them.”
Keep standing out,
Jonah
