One-to-One Workshops

In our One-to-One Workshops, our editors meet individually with your lawyers to review a project from their actual practice for style, structure and substance. Through detailed analysis of a single work, your lawyers will learn concrete techniques for rigorous self-editing that they can apply to their work in the future.

We are passionate about one-to-one coaching and have worked individually with over one thousand lawyers of all levels and abilities on both litigation and transactional documents. Our One-to-One Workshops are extremely popular and are a highly effective tool for nurturing legal talent.

The Editing Process

Before a one-to-one meeting, each lawyer submits a project for comment. We edit each project from the standpoint of lawyers—not grammar police—so our focus is on the substance and structure of the legal argument, although we also edit for plain English and usage. Marie Buckley handles litigation-type documents and focuses on three layers of editing:

• sentence level editing: a line-by-line edit for plain English and clarity
• structural editing: a substantive review for logic and structure
• synthesis: the final review for balance, tone, persuasiveness and integrity.

Ilissa Povich reviews transactional documents and helps lawyers to better understand complicated transactions and to draft documents that clearly and accurately reflect the transaction.

Our Comments

After completing our line-by-line edit, we summarize our comments and suggest concrete techniques for improving not only each paper but also each writer’s style. Our goal is to teach the skills for self-editing through rigorous analysis of a single paper. We provide your lawyers with both the line-by-line edit and more general Take-Away comments.

The Meetings

Our meetings focus on the substantive and technical issues each paper presents, rather than abstract writing techniques. We question. We listen. We offer positive feedback, as well as constructive criticism. We work with each lawyer to find the structure and arguments that make each paper work and to build on existing skills. We strive to keep meetings constructive—and friendly.