Drafting is a craft. Read about it.

The prayer clause is the most important paragraph in any petition. It is the only part where you tell the court exactly what you want. And yet most law students draft it last, in five minutes, as an afterthought. That is a mistake. The prayer must be specific, complete, and legally possible. Vague prayers get dismissed. Prayers that ask for more than the law allows get struck down. Prayers that miss a relief force you to file a second petition. Draft your prayer first. Let it guide everything else. The rest of the petition exists to justify what the prayer demands.

A redline is not a correction. It is a lesson. Every change a senior makes to your draft carries a reason. A deleted word was vague. A rewritten sentence was structurally weak. An added clause covered a risk you missed. Most juniors look at a redlined draft and feel embarrassed. The ones who improve fast look at it and ask why. Why did this sentence get cut? Why was this clause moved? Why does the new version say it differently? Read every redline as a practitioner explaining their thinking. After ten redlines reviewed this way, your drafting will transform.

Legal drafting fails most often not because of what is missing but because of what is there. Five words that consistently weaken drafts: “reasonable” without a standard attached, “forthwith” when a deadline is needed, “inter alia” to avoid listing specifics, “may” when the obligation should be “shall”, and “notwithstanding” without clarity on what exactly is being overridden. Each of these words hides a decision the drafter did not make. Good drafting makes every decision visible. When you find yourself reaching for any of these five, stop. Ask what you actually mean. Then write that instead.

A contract has one job: to make a deal survive contact with reality. Not the ideal version of the deal. The version where one party is late, one party disagrees about what was agreed, and neither party wants to go to court. Every clause in a contract should answer one of three questions. What did the parties agree to? What happens if something goes wrong? Who bears the risk if something unexpected happens? If a clause does not answer one of these three questions, ask why it is there. Good contracts are not long. They are complete. Those are very different things.