Patrick Barry - Good with Words: Writing and Editing

Patrick Barry

Feedback from students at the University of Michigan Law School who took the class version of Good with Words: Writing and Editing

Hands down best class I have taken in the law school. Probably should be a required first-year class. I know that if I took this class my 1L year instead of my 3L year I would have been a better student and a stronger intern.

I tell everyone I talk to that they should take this class. It has been a gift to have time set aside to learn about the art and science of writing.

I looked forward to his class every weekand thats saying something for a class that meets on a Friday afternoon.

This course should be required, either at the 1L or 2L level. It was perhaps the most important course I took at the law school. Learning about the mechanics of writing is something that is forgotten yet so important for us as future lawyers.

One of the BEST courses Ive ever had in law school.

Professor Barry is a phenomenal teacher. He cares about his students and teaches in a way that is memorable and effective!

I loved the class and highly recommended it to my friends.

Professor Barry created an interesting, informative, and helpful course. I enjoyed his assignments because they forced me to read non-legal work and familiarize myself with good writingsomething I do not do while in law school.

This was a great course, and Professor Barry got everyone involved and excited about being better writers. It went beyond writing a better brief and touched on things that I never realized I could improve.

I cannot thank Professor Barry enough for the amount of time and work he put into this class. I have benefitted a great deal because of his hard work and will recommend [it] to all students.

This has been the most helpful class Ive taken in law school. I highly recommend every law student take Professor Barrys class. He is great at showing students how to improve their writing one step at a time.

Patrick Barry is the best professor Ive had in law school. He goes out of his way to teach us to write better, but also to become better lawyers and better people. Its obvious that he puts a ton of work outside class into developing the curriculum, and the students are better off for it. Im incredibly grateful to have taken his class.

Professor Barry is an excellent teacher. While I can only speak to my own experience, I believe that he did a great job of making the course accessible to every studenta difficult task considering the course is open to 1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls.

Patrick Barry is amongst the best professors I have ever had (if not the best). He cares about teaching. He cares about his students. [And his] class is structured in a way that allows him to truly focus on helping every student achieve their personal best as a writer, putting the focus squarely on growth rather than differentiation.... This was easily my favorite class in law school so far.

Professor Barry is one of the best professors or teachers I have ever had, which is clearly a function of how much he demonstrably cares about pedagogy. The class is always dynamic and interesting.

Professor Barry goes above and beyond to engage students, empower them, and encourage their pursuits in and out of the classroom.

I wish that I could have taken more courses with Professor Barry. He was engaging, thoughtful, and dedicated to my success. Being in his class has been a privilege.

Copyright 2019 by Patrick Barry

Some rights reserved

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, California, 94042, USA.

Published in the United States of America by

Michigan Publishing

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9997109

ISBN 978-1-60785-474-6 (paper)

ISBN 978-1-60785-475-3 (e-book)

An imprint of Michigan Publishing, Maize Books serves the publishing needs of the University of Michigan community by making high-quality scholarship widely available in print and online. It represents a new model for authors seeking to share their work within and beyond the academy, offering streamlined selection, production, and distribution processes. Maize Books is intended as a complement to more formal modes of publication in a wide range of disciplinary areas.

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For Eva, the best person with whom to spend the most time

I am finishing up my time here at Michigan and am wondering if you have a book. I want to refer to your lectures in the future.

email from third-year law student at the University of Michigan, June 2016

How persuasive can you expect to be if you are not good with words?

written on the board in class, April 2017

People dont choose between things, they choose between descriptions of things.

Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics

I dont think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little.

Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing (1982)

The lawyer looked surprised. Okay, then, he said, and got up a little too hastily, as though grateful that his job had been made easier. Obinze watched him leave. He was going to tick on a form that his client was willing to be removed. Removed. That word made Obinze feel inanimate. A thing to be removed. A thing without breath or mind. A thing.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (2013)

The words you choose can change the decisions people make. Psychologists call the mechanics of this choice framing. Framing, it seems, extends all the way to taste buds.

The researcher who pioneered the study of framing in the courtroom is the psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, whose expertise has been used in trials as different and influential as those of O. J. Simpson, Timothy McVeigh, and mass murderer Ted Bundy. One of Loftuss most well-known experiments showed that changing just a single word when questioning eyewitnesses about a car accident can significantly alter their memories of that accident. If you ask witnesses, Did you see the broken headlight? youll likely get more witnesses to say yes than you would if you instead ask them, Did you see a broken headlight?

This discrepancy persists even in scenarios where none of the cars in the accident actually had a broken headlight.the question using the definite article the instead of the indefinite article a seems to create a (false) broken headlight in peoples brains.

Keep these findings in mind when you approach any piece of writing. Think about more than just the straightforward definition of the words you use. Think about the connotations of those words as wellthe ideas they might evoke, the reactions they might elicit, the images and emotions they could stir up.

The poet Naomi Shihab Nye has a wonderful phrase for all this below-the-surface content. She calls it, in a poem about her grandmother, the words under the words.

The next time you write an email, tell a story, or send someone a text, think about the words under the words in the message you hope to communicate. The same goes for any official document you are asked to put together. It could be a contract. It could be a mission statement. It could be a grant or essay or pitch deck. Whatever you are asked to compose or whatever you decide to compose on your own, the words under your words will play a role. Be aware of the work they are doing.