Jeff L.

welcome everyone. I am Jeff Lewis

Tim Kowal  

and I'm Tim Kowal. Both Jeff and I are certified appellate specialists, and as uncertified podcast hosts, we try to bring our audience of trial and appellate attorney some legal news and perspectives they can use in their practice as always. If you find this podcast helpful, please recommend it to a colleague,

Jeff L.  

and do give us a helpful rating on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to this podcast.

Tim Kowal  

Today, we're very pleased to welcome Patrick Hagen to the podcast. He's someone who has become something of a legal writing whisperer on LinkedIn. Patrick is an accomplished attorney with deep experience in complex litigation. But what truly sets him apart is his uncanny ability to make legal writing both sharper and more human. With over 35,000 followers on LinkedIn, Patrick has built a devoted audience of lawyers, law students and just legal nerds everywhere, who tune in for crisp, clever and often disarmingly generous writing tips. And for our purposes, Jeff, we we hope to tap into some of Patrick's 35,000 listeners. I think that that was my the last time I checked. By now it might be up to 40 or 50,000 who knows it's growing?

Patrick Hagen  

Yeah. Tim, I have, I have a quick disclaimer. They're mainly bots, but I have a few real lawyers as well.

Tim Kowal  

All right, we have a few and maybe the same, real listeners to this podcast. But to finish your introduction, Patrick, you served as editor in chief of the Regent University Law Review. You clerked in federal court, and now you practice law in Utah, while maybe maybe moonlighting as the internet's favorite legal writing coach. So today, we'll talk about where your love of writing began and what fuels your relentless clarity, and what really happens when you spot a grammatical faux pas in the wild. Do you really have do you really react with such earnest and charm, or do you sometimes grit your teeth and bang the table when you see the same legal errors over and over again? So welcome to the show, Patrick. Thank you for joining us.

Patrick Hagen  

Thanks and and just a quick clarification. I practice in Florida, but with a national firm, so I get the pleasure of working on cases nationally. Haven't had a Utah case yet, but I know Charice on LinkedIn, she's, she's our Utah expert.

Tim Kowal  

Yeah, see that? Here's a good, a good live example of why not to trust chat GPT for everything. I fed it a bunch of information about you, and it came back with Utah. And I thought, well, I didn't think Utah should. I should have checked that. You

Patrick Hagen  

can see here, I'm in Florida's capital, Tallahassee. That's, that's that large building behind me. That's right, the Utah Capitol looks like, well,

Tim Kowal  

Patrick, let's get right into your you built a reputation for legal writing advice, both in creative, enthusiastic. You've got 35 I think 36 plus 1000 LinkedIn followers, and they can't all be wrong. So walk us through your process, from identifying a common writing pitfall to delivering a post that really sticks in people's minds.

Patrick Hagen

Yeah, for me, my legal writing journey on LinkedIn started about three years ago, and I think at the time, I was following someone y'all probably follow as well. Lindsay

Tim Kowal 

Lindsay Lawton, yeah,

Patrick Hagen  

Lindsay Lawton, she practices here. She used to practice here in Tallahassee. Now she's an administrative law judge. And so Lindsay started posting legal writing tips. And I thought, as someone who used to be an EIC and just did a few years of clerking, what could I give back to the legal community? I can't really be an expert on a lot, but I thought, hey, I have some legal writing advice. So I started jumping in. And I remember one of the first posts that I ever made, Ross Guberman reposted it. And I was like, I have this guy's book. He spoke at the courthouse. He like, signed my book on on legal writing. I'm like, Okay, I have to keep doing this. And so for me, it really just started off by noticing things I saw in other briefs and things that I know judges thought were not great writing styles and things that would upset judges or just not be As persuasive. And that's what all all got it started for me, yeah.

Tim Kowal

Well, your tone on LinkedIn and presenting all of these legal writing tips, it's always in sincere, earnest and helpfulness, what part of you and your personality is behind that? Because what I've what I've seen, there's maybe multiple, obviously, all of us legal writing nerds come in different shapes and sizes, but a lot of us can be very, very mean when we spot a legal writing faux pas. I remember reading one fun tweet online. This wasn't in the in the writing community. It was in the programming community, but it was someone who said, Whenever I have a programming problem that I can't get around, I'll post it on Reddit. And because I know people are not naturally helpful, but they are naturally mean and biting and want to correct errors, I'll log in on a different account and make an obscenely wrong answer to my own post, and then people will jump on and I get the right answer 100% of the time. So I guess that's, that's another way, maybe, maybe I just thought of my own way to break into the legal writing tip community 

Patrick Hagen 

but post bad tips on Reddit, see

Tim Kowal  

where. Yeah, that's right. But how do you, how do you what's, what's the origin for each of your tips, and how you come across them, how you present them with with such charity?

Patrick Hagen 

Yeah. Yeah. As for my style, it comes down to personality. I found that on LinkedIn, just as in, anything you want to be authentic, and so I'm not a type of person who's angry about stuff or gets super passionate about stuff, where I'm just going to be like this is the only way, maybe, except for my old days of wanting two spaces after a period. But we can talk about that later. So yeah, I remember when I first started litigating, a partner was like, if you're not an intense personality who really loves to argue and it's just gets passionate about stuff, and you can't really advocate for your client knowing that they're the only right way, then you can't be a litigator. And I learned pretty quickly that judges don't think that way. Judges are very neutral, and they see both sides. But with LinkedIn, of course, you have to pick a side, just like with arguments representing clients, and once you pick a side, you're going to get a whole host of people who pick the opposite side. And that's what really drives a lot of posts. But for me personally, I like to be authentic. I like to be kind, and most of the time in legal writing, there's not always a wrong way, but in my opinion, there are some wrong ways. But that sums it up.

Tim Kowal 

There's always, yeah, different schools of thought. I guess you could put it even, even the people who, who don't embrace the Oxford comma, I guess they, they they're still in good company. They still have reputable people. You know that they could, they could still, we could still allow them to have a career. We could say

Patrick Hagen 

they're exist. There are a few Oxford comma users that I work with, non Oxford comma users, and that's one thing I just want to edit so badly. But since they're the senior attorney who's been practicing for 40 years, I just have to grip my teeth and let it go.

Tim Kowal 

Are there any experiences that you've had in your life and career that they were really formative in developing your approaches and ideas about legal writing? You've been an editor in chief of Law Review, you've been a judicial clerk, and now in practice, are each of those experiences? Do each of those experiences lend to your body of knowledge and opinions on legal writing? And are there other checkpoints that were formative?

Patrick Hagen

Definitely, I started off clerking for a state appellate judge who his whole writing style was not like what I saw in law school, which is convoluted and and thick writing style. What I learned from this judge, his name's Tim Osterhaus, was to write clear, simple opinions that an ordinary person on the street could read and understand, and so that was his style. Then I went and clerked for a federal judge the Northern District of Florida, Kent Weatherall, and he had a very similar style. His was break it down simple concepts. And that really formed a lot of my writing style today. That's continued on, is judges want clear, simple writing, and it's easier said than done, it's hard to write clear, simple writing and still convey a very complex idea.

Tim Kowal

Now I'm going to ask you the hard question. Now I want you to admit what is an embarrassing writing faux pas that you personally have committed in the past?

Patrick Hagen 

Yeah, when I first started private practice after clerking, one of the faux pas I got was, Look your writing sounds like you're a judge. Like, stop writing like you're a judge. And so personally, I was so afraid to be biased or overstate things that I'd write briefs in this hyper neutral judicial tone. And so that was the first lesson was, this is your client. You have to advocate on their behalf. And I found somewhat of a middle ground that I don't have to have these strong words, like clearly or obviously. I'm not going to put that in a brief but you can still advocate for a client in a way that is representing them to the fullest extent you can. Do

Tim Kowal 

you ever have co authors who insert those kinds of words that you deliberately omitted? I'm not going to say, clearly, I don't want to say, obviously I don't want to say axiomatically. And yet, here you get a red line saying, Oh, you need to have more emphasis.

Patrick Hagen  

Oh, yeah, especially in my earlier days of being an associate, you don't have as much power to push back, and you probably don't have that same relationship with the with the partner that you're working with to really say, okay, but this is why I wouldn't go so far to include that that word. But the farther I've gone along in my career, the more I have, the more ability I have to actually work with the partners and clients. Clients is the trickier issue of saying, Okay, this probably isn't something we want to put in there. I know you feel very strongly about this, but something you have to, you have to think about, when you're writing for a client, is they know the case so personally, whether it's a business or an individual that has such strong feelings about the case because they've been hurt by it, whether it's a commercial dispute or something more personal, it's very personal to them, no matter how you view it. But then on the other side, you have the judge who sees things in a more neutral tone, who looks at both briefs, and I saw that in my time clerking, and you have to find a way to build a bridge between the two, between advocacy and neutrality to the so the judge can actually see the persuasion in your argument, but at the same time not using such strong words, like obviously axiomatically and et cetera.

Tim Kowal  

Yeah, that can be very difficult playing that intermediary between the client and the court,

Jeff L. 

the client, the court and Google and chat GPT, when you have a client who said, Hey, how about inserting this legal doctrine that doesn't exist, but chat GPT tells me exist,

Patrick Hagen 

yeah, and I have a whole host of case cases that it gave me you should use,

Jeff L.  

yeah. Do you or your firm? Have you started to toying around with using forms of AI to sharpen your writing or to give you alternative views of how a certain passage could read?

Patrick Hagen  

Yeah? The two non controversial softwares that we use are one brief catch. I mentioned Ross Guberman earlier. I'm not getting paid for this endorsement, by the way, but his software has a great way of taking overused phrases and different types of writing styles that are a bit convoluted and breaking them down into simpler terms. And then I also use clear brief again. I'm not being sponsored here, but I would love to be Jackie, and her software is great for actually checking cases. That's what I use it for the most, is it shows you Okay, first of all, is this a real case? And then secondly, is what you're saying actually supported, and shows you a level of support or lack of support, because even if you're using something like a Westlaw AI, which every case is going to be real, you you have opportunity to just put in what you want it to say, and it's going to give you a case, but it not might not be quite as supported. Yeah,

Jeff L. 

yeah. How about putting those two products aside in terms of taking a paragraph of text that you've written in terms of word choice or grammar or style, because I know, brief catch has a series of rules that it implements from Ross's presentations over the years. But you know, sometimes AI could be used to, kind of you give it instructions. Say, Hey, make this more neutral, or make this more more of an advocate piece. Have you played around at all with that 

Patrick Hagen 

Yeah, yeah. And once you do it in a way that's making sure you're maintaining client confidentiality, yeah, I think it's a great tool. It's, it's a great way to, okay, how can I rephrase this? I think the big issue with ranging from law students to practicing attorneys is they just say, chat, GPT. Write this argument for me, and then they stop there. What I do sometimes is I'll write an argument, and then I'll say, okay, revise this. This sentence. Make it simpler, make it something that a fifth grader could read or let's work. Let's revise this idea a little bit, using it almost more as an editing tool rather than a drafting tool.

Jeff L. 

Yeah, yeah. And being open to iterations, it's it's gonna give you garbage the first time out, I've played around with CO counsel Tim and I were early adopters before it was gobbled up by Thompson rotors and and it was fantastic when it was a standalone project, a product. I don't like the interface now that it's been bought by Westlaw, but the CO counsel component really can give you some outstanding first drafts that you can then, you know, to sharpen and put in your own tone. So I've enjoyed playing around with it to to a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Hagen 

We use CO counsel as well. And it's all of these tools are great. You just have to recognize what are their limitations, right? And then which? Which one is better at one task than the other, because I don't think there's quite one tool out there with AI yet that is perfect at everything, or that could necessarily replace a young associate. 

Jeff L. 

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'd say clear brief, their friend of the program. And when I, when I'm working on appellate briefs, that's it's indispensable, but at the trial level, yeah, co counsel seems to be my go to interesting. What I'm curious, does your firm have any policies or guidelines for young associates, you know, the newcomers, in terms of what they can and can't do with AI,

Patrick Hagen 

yeah, the main the main policy is with chat GPT, yeah, and making sure that associates, partners, they're not using it in a way that is breaching client confidentiality. Yeah. And so on one hand, we have some clients that are saying, hey, we want you to use this, cut costs, start on it as initial draft. We have other clients who say, don't use it. So you have to look at from client to client, because some clients want you to use it. Some clients don't want you to, and so you can't just apply a broad use of it.

Jeff L. 

Yeah, you know, I added a provision in my form routine or agreements to highlight the AI issues so that we can float that issue early on. If a clients can have a problem with it and and I don't understand why we're getting all these decisions these days with judges sanctioning lawyers for citing fake cases. Shouldn't be happening anymore when you have a product like Westlaw or clear brief, or any other a number of products where you can quickly, in 10 seconds, scan a brief and see if the cases are real or not, nobody should be getting sanctioned anymore for fake cases. It's just, it's mind blowing. 

Patrick Hagen 

Well, it's the same lawyers who aren't taking the time to check if the cases are fake, right? Yeah, yeah. Or it's just, it's just not getting reviewed, yeah,

Jeff L. 

sorry, Tim, off my soapbox. Back to you. Sorry.

Tim Kowal 

The even more surprising cases are the ones that come out of larger firms. Larger firms are misusing AI. That's even more mind boggling. I can understand the small firm or solo firm being in a rush and indulging in the ease of using chat GPT, but you're right, Jeff, that's a good point. You could probably just use another chat GPT search, or an alternative AI search to do a final check on your brief and maybe use that deep search tool to do a little bit more in depth analysis. I think it's less likely to hallucinate if you use the deep search function.

Jeff L.  

Yeah, I suppose,

Patrick Hagen 

yeah. The big issue is depending on how you write the prompt, it's like talking to someone that is willing to accommodate your request. If you write it in a certain way that says, hey, I think there's a case that says this, it's going to find a case that says, then if it doesn't, it's going to make one up. So depending on how you write prompts, it, it'll really play to your needs. And I think that's where a lot of attorneys that are getting sanctioned, or, yeah, are missing.

Tim Kowal 

Let me do that on Go ahead. Well, on that point, I've noticed a difference between just regular chat, GPT searches, where it does, I think what you were describing, Patrick, where it says, well, that's a that's a trenchant observation. Tim, you know you're really on to something. And it tells me what I want to hear. If you use the deep research tool, it doesn't do that so much. It'll ask you some follow up. Okay, do you want me to search these authorities or in this, this sub issue? And then it goes and spends five and 10, five or 10 minutes to run the search, and then it comes back, and it's much more neutral. There's no fluff in there, telling me what a what a brilliant chat GPT prompter I am, and what a great question I've asked. It just tells me what I what I've asked it,

Patrick Hagen  

right? So you're not using it for therapy. It sounds like that's that's good

Jeff L. 

before we before we pivot away from Ai. You have one last question here. You're welcome to take the fifth on this. I found a chat GPT or similar products useful in terms of your LinkedIn writing in terms of what you post on LinkedIn?

Patrick Hagen 

Yeah, so I didn't use chat GPT to write one LinkedIn post till about six months ago. So I wrote for about two and a half years without ever touching chat B T. Now I'll write my posts just like I always do, and then I'll think of ways One question I like to ask it is, I'll put in a chat GPT, and I'll say, rate this post. Of course, it might have its own rating system that I don't agree with, or I know from experience, after getting 36,000 followers, that just because chat GPT throws in some type of buzzword, it's not going to mean people are going to actually respond to it more, but it does a good job of providing feedback, and so I'll have it do that. Oh, nice.

Tim Kowal  

Okay, cool. Yeah, it's excellent at suggesting emojis. I'd be curious to know if you use its emoji suggestion for your posts.

Patrick Hagen 

I have not three. I need to you're going to see my next post. It's just going to be filled with emojis, because I've never asked chatgpt for an emoji suggestion.

Tim Kowal

No, those are all original emoji you drafted by hand. They

Patrick Hagen  

are yes, typically the the laughing emoji or the the nervous sweatbeat emoji. Are my, my go tos.

Yeah.

Tim Kowal 

Let me ask you a little bit about your, your, I guess, legal interpretive philosophy, or if you have a jurisprudential philosophy that guides any of your own personal legal writing, you know as depending on the case. Sometimes cases will lend to different types of approaches, if it's like a strict textual interpretation type of argument, or if it's a more of a pragmatic approach, and maybe it depends on the judge. But do you do you personally have an approach that you think is more persuasive, is it? Do you usually tend to stick to what the statute says and stick to what the law says and hope that the judge just follows the textual argument? Or do you also try to make a broader like a pragmatic or policy based argument, or a common sense type of argument as well? Or do you mix it up, or do all of the above?

Patrick Hagen 

Yeah, I have to give the classic lawyer answer. It depends, but based on my background alone and to a small Christian law school where Scalia himself actually came and visited once, and so we a lot of what we learned was, hey, textualism, you know, the same type of stuff. Read the law as it is. Don't try to change it or bend it to work in your advantage. But sometimes, if the law is completely against you, you have to make policy arguments. And so start with textualist. And if you need to make a policy type of argument, do that. But whatever you do, make it clear, make it simple, make it something that the court can read. My one big disagreement with Scalia, though, is the length of his writing, especially the amount of Scalia opinions we had to read and how long those were. That's not my style. I try to write shorter briefs that the court can actually digest.

Tim Kowal 

I forget don't the dissents tend to be longer because you're you're not trying to garner any any votes to join you. You're just writing for your own vanity. I guess

Patrick Hagen 

that's right, and I don't think that's a luxury that we have is as practicing lawyers,

Tim Kowal 

yeah. What about any philosophical stances you have just about the writing in general, or persuasive writing, for example, should writing feel conversational? Should it legal writing, that is, should it feel more formal? And then you want to weigh in on the age old question, Should lawyers deploy pop cultural references, as more and more judges are prone to do these days.

Patrick Hagen 

Yeah, so taking that from the top, I'd say you need to strike a balance between the two, and it also depends, again, on which court Am I in? Okay, if I'm in small claims court in a small county, maybe I'm more conversationalist if I if I'm going up against a pro se plaintiff, maybe I'm breaking it down to be a little bit simpler than I normally would. If I'm in federal debt, it's going to be a bit more formal. If it's an on appeal. Maybe I'm even more formal. So I think it depends on the judge you're appearing before and the tribunal you're appearing before, but I don't take an overly conversational tone that, because an error that can be made when you're trying to be conversational is you see these long string sentences and just trains of thought that are just conscious streams of consciousness, right? So I try to strike a balance between the two. And then, as for making pop cultural references, both the judges I worked for, at least when I was clerking for them, they they didn't take that approach. They didn't try to do these like zingers in their opinions. They were about keeping it clean, keeping it simple, and writing to convey their decision, not to convey their personal opinion?

Tim Kowal  

Yeah, I'd be interested in your take on one of my my own personal maxims in writing is to write the way you would speak if you wouldn't and speak, and when I mean speak, probably think of how you would speak during oral argument. Yeah, so if you wouldn't say it during, say it that way during oral argument, wouldn't you? If you wouldn't say comes now respondent, you know, Joe Smith, on behalf of Tim cool, you know, then, then I wouldn't say that in my writing either. I want my writing to mimic how I speak, and then I want to try to up my game, my speaking game, so that I write I speak the way that I would be writing at my best. I like those two to conform. So that usually means I got to bring my writing down a notch or two in terms of formality and fussiness, and bring my speaking up a notch or two in terms of, you know, how, how well I put a sentence together. Yeah, that's a great equally hard, but I wonder what your thoughts on that is, are

Patrick Hagen  

words are hard? Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. That's that's one thing that every time I write a brief, a lot of the clients that I have, their in house counsel clients, they come from an older background. Of you always put comes now, and so that's something that I just kind of all right, I put it in the brief. So now, you know, Tim, I'm not going to say it when I'm at when I'm presenting before the judge, but a lot of my briefs do contain comes. Now, even though I hold deeply personal beliefs about it that I agree with you, we don't need wherefore. Or for, for the following reasons, henceforth, forevermore, you know, yeah, I completely agree with

you, yeah,

Tim Kowal  

yeah. Well, speaking of that in I see this is a different subject, I guess, but in a conclusion of a brief they seem too often to be totally wasted real estate. Conclusion is a time where you should be able to kind of kick up your feet and look, I put all my arguments out there, all the facts, all the arguments are out there. I've covered everything. Now I can just, you know, now it's just you and me judge. Now I can tell you what I really think you should do with this case. And you can be a little bit more informal, but instead, too often you just see, you know, for the above reference reasons, the court should affirm or the court should grant the motion, or whatever it is, without actually using it to say anything.

Patrick Hagen 

Yeah, no, that's, that's a great point. I we recently won a case on summary judgment, so woo hoo. And thinking about that brief, I remember putting in the conclusion, not just your simple for the foregoing reasons which foregoing like, who says that? Instead, I wrote a simple description of what happened in the case which it was a case involving an accident of sorts. I'm not going to get into that, but I wrote it in a very clear manner that really struck the court so they could remember why my client wasn't at fault in that case, and I made it more of a storyline, rather than just for the foregoing reasons, right?

Tim Kowal

Yeah, I think that's a great use of it is just to tell the story again, I think, Well, I remember Myron Moskovitz, who's a very prominent appellate attorney here in California. He put it once that you should be thinking about your oral argument, what you're going to be saying at oral argument, well, as early as possible, when you're writing your opening brief. And I think he likes to try to connect the conclusion of his opening brief to what he's going to say at oral argument. So you should have the theme of your case well in mind when you're writing your your opening brief, or when you're writing your motion, and be able to link that in. So there's continuity and consistency between all of your arguments, between the time you write it in the time you get to to oral argument. There's too many judges I was or lit against will not even remember what there were, what they said in their complaint. For example, I was listening to a judge panel yesterday who was saying something to the effect of, look, when we're at a, you know, trial setting conference or at a Case Management Conference, and I ask you, you know, look like you alleged x in your complaint, and the attorney says, either, well, I don't have my complaint here with me, or I wrote that a long time ago. Your Honor, that's not an acceptable answer. There has to be continuity and consistency of your arguments throughout the case.

Patrick Hagen 

Yeah. And speaking of complaints, one area you don't see quite as much storytelling and advocacy is often in the complaint. It's all right, I need to check the boxes to make sure I hit all the elements, which, of course, you do. But it could be complaints could be written a lot more persuasively by using the theme all the way throughout the complaint, while weaving in the things you need to check the boxes on, but really hitting on the storyline so the judge has a little bit more vested interest in it,

Tim Kowal 

yeah? And it can be very difficult to know what your theory is. Theory of the case is. At the time you're writing the complaint, you're just trying to put together viable causes of action,

Patrick Hagen 

and by the short timeframe you have, yeah, yeah,

Tim Kowal 

yeah, you're trying to beat a statute of limitation, or whatever it is. And you know, you don't know what the theme is, or what the nuance of the factual nuances, you haven't had the opportunity for discovery yet. So I would, you know, Grant allowances to the trial counsel between the time of writing the the complaint and the time of trial. But, but judges often don't they they look at that operative complaint, whatever it is, and they're going to hold you to it. So maybe if there have been substantial changes in the case and you want to update what your legal theories are, or the factual theories, maybe consider amending that complaint before you show up to trial and the court says, Did I call the right case? This doesn't seem like the case that I read in the based on the complaint, yeah, I wanted to go over some of some of my favorite of your writing tips, or another way to put them.

Patrick Hagen

I'm excited, because it's been some of them I wrote, like, years ago. So yeah, I'm ready to hear

Tim Kowal 

Yeah, or or to put it in a negative connotation, you know, writing tips or pet peeves. So, so here's some of mine that you've written in the past. Be ruthless with transitions. Guide the reader logically. And these are just, just very short. It's lacking the contest context from your original quote. But if you or post, but if you can remember what you meant by that, being ruthless with transitions, because they guide the reader logically. What do you mean by that?

Patrick Hagen  

Yeah, that point goes back to a professor I had in college where he said, Okay, so you can read this whole book. And I know it's a lot longer than most of you are even even going to want to read, but I'll let you read just the first sentence in the last sentence of each paragraph, and if you can understand it, and you can put your report together, then you can do it that way. And from that point on, I remembered if you can logically connect paragraph to paragraph from whether it's the first sentence and the conclusion to the next, first sentence of the next paragraph, and you can catch exactly what you're trying to say. Then you successfully use transitions. You've been able to convey it in a way that's not so staccato of you know, I'm on this bumpy road, where is this actually going to a cohesive brief.

Tim Kowal 

It links one paragraph to to the next. Yeah, they don't feel like they're standalone. That's right. The next tip is, use clear and specific headings. This will help you preview. Allow you allow the reader to preview the structure clearly. Tell us more what that means about the importance of using clear and specific headings.

Patrick Hagen

Yeah, with that tip, what I was thinking of when I wrote that, which I don't remember when I wrote it, but in so many briefs, I'm practicing in district court a lot, but still in so many briefs, you just see cause of action number one, or or argument number one. And there's not, there's no type of advocacy in the heading. And so it goes kind of back to that same point of, if I can look at each one of your headings, and I know Chris shandabel also has a post out there somewhere on this, and I can see

Tim Kowal

ninja, that's

Patrick Hagen

right, yeah, if I can see each of your arguments just in the headings, then I'm going to be able to jump into the paragraph and have a lot more understanding than trying to figure out what are they arguing about here,

Tim Kowal 

I wonder if you agree with my approach in Writing the headings for the statement of facts or statement of the case is, I always like to start every heading with the month and year or if or if applicable, the actual the specific date, because I like the to give the court or the reader a chronology within my statement of facts and statement of the case so they know exactly what happened when you know the relative time distance between each of the main events, because otherwise I feel like I always want to know what the chronology is, personally as a reader, and I'm always annoyed when I have to delve into the actual pros of the of the subsections to find out when something happened. What do you think about that approach?

Jeff L. 

That's That's funny, Tim, because when my associates bring me a brief that have any dates in the headlines, in the headings, I take a red pen and I ruthlessly remove all dates unless there's a statute of limitations issue. I do headings in order. You know, the accident, the recovery, the trial. But, yeah, dates boy, snoozeville. But what do you think, Patrick? I probably

Patrick Hagen

lean more towards Jeff's approach in that if headings, I mean if, if dates aren't going towards the argument, like this is a breach of contract case, and they had to do something by x date, and they didn't do it by that date, then I'm going to be putting in a lot of dates, because dates matter. But if it's not an argument that's specific to a timeline, but it's specific to something else, I'll probably do in 20 22x happened, and I'll still put a date in there to guide the reader as to generally when something happened. Or I could say in August of 2025, but I don't have to say on August, 22 2025 Patrick Hagen spoke with Jeff and Tim on their podcast. But maybe that's coming from a different perspective, and that I don't write as many appellate briefs, and I'm more on the trial side.

Tim Kowal 

Well, Jeff's written more appellate briefs than I have. It's possible I just have a personal bias in terms of wanting to know when things happened and, and maybe I would second guess the writer, that maybe the writer is overlooking an important chronological issue, and, but I as the reader still want to know what those dates are, but that that could be me. I'm I'm in the minority in this company. So the next, next tip is next to Patrick Hagen, tips is watch for legalese instead, use simpler language when possible. Think this is self explanatory, but say a few more words about why we should avoid using legalese.

Patrick Hagen

Yeah, again, that goes back to the two judges I clerked for and how they were able to take such complex ideas and make them into simple concepts that the everyday reader could understand. And so a lot of the time I'm dealing with judges who are very sharp, who they could handle a lot of legalese. But just because a judge can handle it doesn't mean they enjoy reading legalese. And so I avoid legalese unless, again, you have an issue that requires you to say a certain legal phrase. But otherwise, if it's not necessary, then you're just adding more density to a brief that could be simpler.

Tim Kowal 

Let's see. And then you would you'd also offered some guidance for using chat GPT effectively, which we talked about a little bit earlier. You said that we should avoid using chat GPT for legal research, but do ask chat GPT to rewrite sentences in plain English, which I think is a great idea. You mentioned doing that, trying that for some of your posts. But I think that's a that's a winning idea for attorneys after they've written something, especially when you've when you're really close to the case. And hey, it makes sense to me, because I've been living this case, put into chat GPT and see if it can make it a little bit simpler than you have otherwise. Made it when you and when you when you're living the case. Anything about it makes sense to

Patrick Hagen 

you? That's right, yeah, yeah. You can almost use it as a third party that can look at it and say, This doesn't make sense, or or this does, but, yeah, it's a great tool to be able to put in a sentence or a very complex idea and have it symbolize it.

Tim Kowal 

What have you gotten? Gotten in general, from, from the comments to you know your to all your LinkedIn posts, you've got 36,000 plus followers. I don't, I haven't counted how many posts there have been hundreds, I'm sure maybe over 1000 posts. There been

Patrick Hagen  

a lot of posts, I'm not sure either,

Tim Kowal 

and and they all get just, just an amazing amount of engagement. There's just dozens and dozens of comments to almost every single one of your posts. Have you you? Have you learned things from from your comments, or been struck by some of the some of the comments? What are your takeaway in general, from your audience on LinkedIn?

Patrick Hagen 

I have some. Sometimes I'd write a legal writing post that I felt strongly about, and then I'd get a bunch of comments, and then I'd ultimately comment on the post myself and say, So and so is right. This probably is a better way than what I just suggested in this post, so I can be humble and and recognize that I'm not the legal writing ninja like some people, I still have training before I'm a ninja, but yeah, so with LinkedIn, you have lawyers who are very opinionated, and so just my quick LinkedIn tip for anyone who who's thinking about starting to post on LinkedIn is one you have to take. Take a side. So pick a side. If you post a very neutral tip, it's not going to get any traction. It kind of goes back to your Reddit comment, right? That someone wants to point out something's wrong, or they want to point out why they believe one side is right, or they want to point out why they believe one side is wrong. Maybe a great example of this is one space versus two spaces after a period, which for years, because the judges I clerked for used two spaces after a period. That's what I did as well. And so I found a lot of people wanted to talk about that on LinkedIn, because it really split the legal community. It's the big important things, you know? Yeah, but yeah, I do learn from the comments and often. My other small LinkedIn tip here is, if you are going to post something on LinkedIn, be prepared to engage with the comments within the first 30 minutes. You might not have to spend the whole 30 minutes on there, but think of it like a snowball. It starts small, and once it starts rolling down the hill, once I get a first comment, and I respond to that comment, and then that happens again and again, the Snowball is going to ultimately just go on its own. Like, I posted something this morning, and I haven't looked at it for hours, and it I checked on it a minute ago, and it has like 175 likes and bunch of comments now, because people are commenting to each other, talking to each other in the comments, and so it can be a lot of fun.

Tim Kowal 

Yeah, yeah. That's, that's the way the algorithms reward you as they they see a lot of engagement, and they say, Hey, this is hot stuff that all of our readers need to know about.

Yes, yeah. So

Tim Kowal  

that's, that is advice I've heard from from SEO professionals as well, is that you should really babysit that post for the first minutes, if it starts getting engagement immediately, and you can push that along by commenting on others comments then, yeah, that's a way to get the snowball rolling down the hill.

Definitely. You mentioned

Tim Kowal

a little bit earlier about, you know, we attorneys sit as intermediaries between the client and the and the court. I wonder if you have any thoughts on, you know, how, how we as the attorney can, can do our best work and feel good about every case, even though in litigation, it's binary, you know, some we're going to win and some we're just going to lose. And I like to think that my, you know, that that my contribution was valuable, even on the cases where we don't bring back the W and that good writing is its own reward, even though the client just wants to win. You know, the client's not going to really care, are they? If, you know, we put together, you know, a real beautifully written brief, if it didn't win, how can clients see the value of in our advocacy, our quality civil advocacy, even when it doesn't yield the desired result?

Patrick Hagen

Yeah, as you mentioned, you know, clients hire you for outcomes, and so they want to see the win, and if it's not a win, then it's a loss. But along the way, you know, good advocacy builds trust with the client. It builds trust to show them that you're not putting typos in your brief, and it builds trust to show you that the court is going to take your argument seriously. So although we don't inherit the facts in any of our cases, you know, some, oh, this is a great case. This is great facts. Others, you can kind of tell when it might be a loser, but you still have to present it in a way to the court that's clear, coherent, that the court can understand, and no matter the outcome, you have to be able to stand behind your brief and say, This is the best possible argument we could have made, and representation we could have made to the court. So you have to make it difficult for the court in those in those cases where your facts aren't great, because if you're not writing in a way that the court's going to want to rule for you, then you're already at a loss.

Yeah,

Tim Kowal 

yeah, I like that. You should make it. You know, in the cases where you should win, even where you don't win, at least you can come away thinking that, well, that judge must feel bad about himself, because he should have agreed with me.

Patrick Hagen 

That's the goal, make judges feel bad about themselves. That's right.

Tim Kowal 

Okay. Last question, off duty, what are you reading when you're not reading legal briefs? Do you have personal favorites? Favorite authors, literary, legal or otherwise.

Patrick Hagen 

So as you know, as busy attorneys, we read so much during our work day that by the time I get home, have dinner with the kids and put the kids to bed, the only excellent source of reading material that I've read that night is something like the Bernstein bears. So I have a seven year old, five year old, three year old and a one year old, and so that's about the extent of my reading for fun. Is children's books. But with that said, it gives you a great insight into what great writing can be. It's storytelling. It's writing. It in a simple way. I know I've said the word simple and clear, although we're not going to say clearly in the brief a lot this podcast, but you want to convey a story that is so simple that a kid could potentially understand

Tim Kowal 

it. I got a book recommendation for you and your kids if you haven't read Lewis sacker. Remember the Disney movie holes from about 20 years ago. Shia LaBeouf was in it. Louis Sachar wrote the book, and he's also written a couple other his best series, I think, is called sideways stories from Wayside school. Your kids will get a kick out of it. It's about a school who it was supposed to be 30 classrooms on one story, but the builder build it 30 stories tall, with one classroom on each story, and the the builder said he was very sorry. That's, that's how the book starts. But it's all about adventures on the on the classroom on the 30th floor. Very cool. It's, it's quite whimsical and well written, all right. Well, since we have a legal writing expert on the podcast, Jeff, we have to subject him to the lightning round.

Jeff L. 

Yeah, otherwise, I'll get hate mail from France. So yeah, if we whenever we don't do a lightning round. So all right, this is the time for our patented, copyrighted segment of the show that answers the most pressing questions that Vex appellate nerds around the world the dreaded lightning round, looking for short responses, one sentence, if you can keep it simple. I know, you know simple. Here we go, important topics. Here, font, preference, century, school book, Garamond or something else, TNR 12.

I'm sorry, times

Ptrick Hagen 

New Roman 12. Oh, my God

Tim Kowal  

I did. Do we not even have times on the among our options. Again, Patrick,

Patrick Hagen 

this doesn't count towards the lightning round, but if I had a personal preference, it'd be aerial, which is one of the most controversial legal writing things I can say. I know, wow. Okay,

Tim Kowal  

it's fairly controversial.

Jeff L.

We might have to have we might have to have you come back on a separate episode just to discuss font choice, but I think I know the answer, but two spaces are one.

Patrick Hagen 

I become one. All right,

of course.

Jeff L. 

You know, here in California, the lower courts. There, we call them the Superior Court. I know you deal a lot with district court, but referring to the lower court, do you write Superior Court in caps with sc, or district court in caps with DC? Or do you just do lowercase when referring to lower?

 Patrick Hagen  53:28

If I'm referring to the court I'm in front of I do all I do uppercase caps, yeah, yeah. It is

 Tim Kowal  

the name of your trial court in Florida,

 Patrick Hagen 

trial court, circuit court, circuit court, yeah, which I know is confusing, because there's a pellet court. It's called circuit in other states,

 Jeff L. 

yeah, all right. Headings, all caps, initial caps, or sentence case,

 Patrick Hagen  

I'm ashamed the main first heading of the brief, all caps, the rest of them, sentence case,

oh, okay, yeah, acceptable. Oh,

 Jeff L.  

I skipped one. This is Tim's favorite plead, or pleaded,

 Patrick Hagen  

what I have a post on that one.

 Jeff L.  

When using initial caps, do you capitalize all words or just those under four letters. I

 Tim Kowal  

think it doesn't use an initial caps.

 Patrick Hagen  

Yeah, I'm not, I'm a, I'm a sentence case guy,

 Jeff L.  

all right, all right, left, justify, or Full Justify,

cool, all

 Jeff L.  

right. And Tim, you you cut me off when you're when you're we had enough lightning. Possessives, Congress, apostrophe or Congress is with an apostrophe between SS,

 Patrick Hagen  

apostrophe between SS, all right, I

 Jeff L.  

don't even understand this one. You must have added this Tim spaces between the periods and an ellipsis or no spaces.dot.or.space.space.do, space, dot space, dot,

dot space, dot space,

 Jeff L. 

okay, and I'm not sure I have an answer for that one. And after major headings in a brief, do you start the next section on a brand new page or continue immediately below?

 Patrick Hagen  

If there's not much space, I'll start it on the next page. I don't want to leave any widows and orphans out there. That's, that's what I'll say.

 Tim Kowal  

Yeah. And the brief writing Ninja has has some pretty strong advice on that. It's he does that's next level. I haven't gotten there yet. Is he

 Jeff L. 

a next page kind of a guy? Or in terms of,

 Tim Kowal  

yeah, he'll strategically write just to bump things to the next page. All right.

 Patrick Hagen  

Not much, but, but you have done so what?

What is,

 Jeff L.  

admittedly, I have I've cleaned up, but I found that judges don't love it, so I don't use it often. When one follow up, what is your criteria? When you decide, hey, I'm

 Patrick Hagen  

going to use it or not? Is it based on the judge you're in front of, or just whether or not it reads, well, what's your criteria? If this is a good candidate for cleaned up or not? If the judge is using cleaned up, I'm happy to use cleaned up, but I found that it often just creates more work for the

judge. They see

 Jeff L.  

cleaned up and they say, Okay, how much cleaning to this person do? So if you're not establishing trust in your citations, then you're losing it. Got it?

 Patrick Hagen  

Got it all right? Well, you

 Jeff L. 

did pretty well. I don't know what your score was, but I think you survived or dreaded it wasn't quite lightning, so I apologize for that. You know, as a reward for your well thought out and simple

 Patrick Hagen  

answers, and despite your adherence to Times

 Tim Kowal  

New Roman, we are going to go ahead and send you a podcast mug as a thank you for coming on the show, looking forward to it all right. Well, thank you so much. Patrick Hagen, if our listeners have not yet subscribed and followed Patrick Hagen on LinkedIn, they must do so now as a precondition to continuing to listen to our podcast, but that's going to wrap up this episode. Jeff. If you have suggestions for future episodes, please email us

 Tim Kowal 

at info, at Cal podcast.com and our upcoming episodes, look for tips on how to lay the groundwork for an appeal when preparing for trial. 

 See you next time

 Patrick Hagen  

Thanks.