A lawyer comments on last week’s exchange between two law professors on the value of the training one gets in law school:

I have been a lawyer since 1994, graduated near the top of my class, and had the privilege of clerking for Associate Justice David Borden on the Connecticut Supreme Court. Judge Borden taught me everything I know about legal writing and everything I did not learn in law school. I have the scars to prove it.
As I advanced through the ranks, I became responsible for junior associate training. I found, to my dismay, that younger attorneys not only did not have basic writing skills (proper punctuation, subject/verb agreement, even spelling), but were hostile to editorial rigor. One very bright young man from Yale told me that spelling and grammar were irrelevant. He contended that it was his ideas that were important. I told him what my mentor told me: “Son, if you are ever fortunate enough to be really good at your profession, your clients will scarcely understand what you do. But what they will understand is good spelling and good grammar. Get that right so they don’t question your skill at more difficult tasks.” I have never forgotten that lesson (though my own work is regrettably rife with errors . . . alas).
Anyone who cares about such things and is forced to read the writing of our law students and recent graduates is doomed to disappointment and teeth ground to nubs.