Being a Writer and a Law Student

In the 2000 movie Finding Forrester, Sean Connery, playing the part of William Forrester—a Pulitzer-prize winning writer—taught Kamal how to write. It was a rather simple formula. You just write and keep on writing. You're not suppose to think. Thinking comes later, he said. To write, you just keep on writing and writing and writing. Kamal did as Forrester said. And in the story, he wrote a beautiful piece that was too good that he was actually judged unworthy of writing it.

Actually, they used typewriters. And following their lead, any time I have the chance, I just typed whatever I want to and I kept on typing to let the words out. I haven't master the process yet because I find myself thinking and spending vast stretches of time just thinking what to write.

This writing and blogging work I do everyday is somehow doing me some good in law school during my exams. I find myself to be much more responsive to the questions when I write my answers. Although I still think before writing, the time constraint forces me to just write and keep on writing like William Forrester. Eventually, I noticed that words do fall into place and somehow they are starting to flow.

Earlier tonight, I took my Criminal Law II exam. And I found myself writing a lot. I could have kept writing, but I was writing legal arguments and they were supposed to end. After the legal argument seemed complete, I would write and add another paragraph until I start to repeat myself.

Law school, it seems, became better because I'm writing now. In fact, I'm tempted to give a categorical recommendation for those who want to be serious lawyers. They should start writing. Reading cases is not the key activity in law school. It is writing.

I have one more exam tomorrow—Legal Ethics. And after that, we will have a debating competition in my Forensics class next week. The latter is especially interesting because it offers a challenging opportunity to do some serious writing.

Anyway, ikanakereba-naranai desû. I have to go. I still need to digest some cases tonight for my Legal Ethics exam. Hmm. More writing work.