How to Write Blog Posts? (The way I write petitions)

Writing is fun, relaxing and fulfiling. Whether you do it as a hobby or semi-professionally, it is always important to structure your writings and blog posts cleverly. I want to share here how I write my blog posts: same way I write petitions.

Thanks to my main profession (that is being a lawyer), I write a lot.

Of course, what I mainly write are petitions to the courts, contracts or other formal documents. Since the main procedure is written procedure in Turkish judicial system, you do everything in writing and mostly with petitions. Hence, a lot of writing.

When you are writing for the court, naturally you need to use a formal language. But the logic is the same. You need to make it understandable, well-structured and maybe most importantly short (It would not be false to think that judges generally do not read all of the petitions).

During my masters degree in USA, I had to take a US legal writing course in order to be able to the bar exam (you need to fulfill certain requirements and credits regarding US Law for the bar exam). That course, for sure, helped me a lot in writing legal documents and even any other thing.

Writing is a style thing. Please keep in mind that I am not saying or claiming that this is the “correct” or “best” way of writing here. This is just my style and how I usually try to structure anything I write.

Structure — The Way I Try to Write

I bet you were told several times in your composition classes (if you had any) at elementary school that a piece of writing should have introduction-body-conclusion paragraphs.

And that is totaly true.

But if you need to detail it a little bit more, here is the structure I usually try to use in the legal documents I draft. This is also what I was taught at Georgetown Law.

After you read, you will realize that you actually write similarly. I believe this or similar structure is actually more important for any kind of writing in which you discuss and advocate any idea or view.

Intro

This is where you try to capture the readers’ first attention. You give information on what’s coming below and try to arouse curiosity to make the reader want to read further. However, this is also where you pass the governing idea very shortly, usually in one sentence.

Thus, this part may be a more important than you might think.

Facts

Facts are important for any case that you litigate in court. Because they are the main factors how you shape your case and arguments to show your claims are legitimate. That is why it is important to clearly explain the court facts of the case. Facts are the events and history of the dispute between the parties and you can determine the facts by answering five w’s and one h (who, why, when, what, where and how).

Similar to the legal documents, in any writing you need to convey the facts to the readers first for your arguments to be understandable. Do not forget that the readers may not have any information on the topic. Or maybe they even see this topic for the first time in their lives. Therefore, clear and detailed explanation of the facts is curicial for a reader to keep on reading and understand what she/he reads.

Arguments

Probably the most fun part of the work is the arguments. This is actually the part why you write what you write: to defend an idea or stance. At last in this part, you reveal your view on the topic to the reader.

In this part you basically say:

• Facts are this
• The rule for this situation is that. / Exception to this rule is that. (There is almost always an exception) (Decide whether rule or exception is applicable)
• Therefore, according to the rule/exception, my view on this topic is that.

Example-Precedents

You need to stand behind your argument and try to convince the reader why your argument is right and legitimate. Therefore, you may as well show real life examples.

For this, we use precedents in courts: older decisions of the same or other courts in similar situations or with similar facts. I abstain from saying “same facts” as in law practice it is usually said “no two dispute is the same”.

So you show your reader examples, maybe even views of other writers who think similarly on the topic and support your argument and idea. And you hope that the reader is convinced :)

But what to do if you are fighting for an idea with no precedent? Something contrary to the generally accepted ideas.

In that case, if you cannot find any supporting precedent, you go and try to rebut the opposing precedents.

This is also something we ofter do during litigation. While you try to present the court precedents supporting your case, the opposing party does the same too. For court to take your side in the end, you need to show them why the precedents presented by the opposing party are not applicable or suitable for this case.

Summary-Conclusion

You did everything you can to present your idea and arguments until now. And hopefully readers born with you and read until this part. So this is where you end it with the glory it deserves.

Here, you summarize everything in your piece very shortly but still manage to pass the main idea and arguments. You can summarize like “I believe this is that. Because facts are like that and the rule/exception is like that. Also this precedent shows that my belief is correct. This is why I stand by my view above.

Above, I try to explain how I try to structure any legal document I draft. This is also the structure I try to keep in mind whenever I write anything else.

Of course, I do not claim such structure is the best or suitable for anybody. However, we all actually write in a very similar structures anyway. In any case, whether this or a different one, it is always a good idea to have a structure in mind or even an outline before you start writing. This will keep your piece tidy and within the boundaries you draw.