Legal writing training
Practice law at a new level
Writing is how lawyers (and other legal writers) carry out the business of the law. Our workshops offer new tools that go well beyond what you learned in law school. You will create unprecedentedly clear, precise, and persuasive legal content faster and more consistently.
We bring a lot of experience to legal drafting
We have consulted on or revised briefs, memos, decisions, contracts, regulatory and enforcement documents, bylaws, expert witness reports, procedural FAQs, and even some legislation.
-
These courses are the starting point to significantly improve your documents and develop skills in your staff.
-
These courses teach writers how to:
work skillfully with key documents that you produce regularly
avoid the pitfalls for that document type
write clearly and quickly under pressure
use templates effectively
gain from others’ experience with these types of documents
-
These courses focus on and strengthen certain skills your team may need, depending on what they write.
Ask us if you need a course you don’t see here.
Offer a workshop for your team
Choose on-site training, live webinars, or self-paced online courses. Each workshop is customized to your organization and group.
Ways to work with us
-
We offer multiple levels of training to reinforce, deepen, and advance your drafters’ skills.
-
Apply this training across your branch, department, or organization to level up and standardize all the documents you produce.
When writers and reviewers are both trained in this way, it reduces complexity, editing time, and back-and-forth reviews.
Transform documents across your organization
One workshop produces real results. Those results are exponentially increased if you train more deeply and systematically.
Some of our clients
Alberta Court of Appeal
Alberta Justice
Alberta Human Rights Commission
BDP
Blakes
Canadian Corporate Counsel Association
Canadian Human Rights Commission
Dentons
FMC Law
GNWT Department of Justice
Government of PEI Department of Justice
Legal Aid Alberta
Norton Rose Fulbright
Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments
Stikeman Elliott
Yukon Human Rights Commission
Core courses
-
Effective Legal Writing
Learn the core skills legal writers need to create clearer, more readable documents faster.
-
Effective Legal Writing Level 2
Deepen principles from Effective Legal Writing. Participants apply what they learned to more complex examples.
-
Effective Legal Writing and Reviewing for Leaders
A condensed version of Effective Legal Writing with a focus on leaders’ needs and how to give clear, useful feedback to writers.
-
Use AI to Think More Deeply and Get Smarter
Get the right relationship with AI as an analysis tool. Use it to gather information, test assumptions, identify risks, and develop more thorough and refined thinking.
Courses for specific documents
-
Written Advocacy
Find a new level of precision and power when writing persuasive legal content
-
Effective Legal Opinions
Give clear, concise legal advice that’s usable by a wide range of readers
-
Effective Decision Writing
Build a persuasive relationship between mandate or law, evidence, and findings
-
Effective Bylaw and Rule Drafting
Revise existing bylaws or develop new ones using clear, accessible language and formatting
Courses in specific skills
-
Streamline the Writing and Review Process
Analyze process steps and time for the drafting, reviewing, and finalizing cycle in your organization. We help you identify inefficiencies, cut time, resolve back-and-forth cycles, and create stronger end products.
-
Build Strong Rationale
Focus on creating strong, evidence-based content in any document type. This trains writers to approach problems more flexibly, analyze issues more deeply, and produce a clearer set of options for decision makers.
-
Write Effectively as a Team
Learn best practices to manage the process to draft a document when multiple writers are involved. Use an orderly, efficient process to create clear content with less stress.
-
Deliver Negative Messages Skillfully
Balance authority, professionalism, and empathy when delivering difficult messages. This training is effective for consumer complaints, complex stakeholder engagement, charged emotional situations, and impartial investigations.
-
Effective Proofreading
Put the final polish on strong content. This is practical, hands-on training to catch errors and improve consistency.
What we teach your people to do
-
![]()
Before
25 words
-
![]()
After
18 words
-
![]()
Before
29 words
-
![]()
After
16 words
-
![]()
Before
29 words
-
![]()
After
14 words
-
![]()
"Our team was very impressed with the Wordsmith writing course. It was engaging, interesting, interactive and brought new insight to even our most experienced writers. The instructors were able to seamlessly blend their examples, tips and tricks to apply to our specific environment. Look forward to engaging them again!
Kelly Tyler, Director at Alberta Justice and Solicitor General
-
![]()
"Our work with Wordsmith has been transformative. Writers and reviewers find that writing is faster and easier overall, and our quality assessment measures show writing quality is improving.
Sarah Bradley, Ombudsman and CEO of the Ombudsman of Banking Services and Investments
-
![]()
"Best writing course I have ever taken."
Benoît Clément, Director of Financial Innovation at Verra
(5 star Google review) -
![]()
“This was a good, practical course. I plan to use the triangle analytical tool to employ a more structured approach to thinking/planning my writing."
Participant from PEI Justice Department
-
![]()
"I really enjoyed this training. It has really given me a lot of ideas of ways to rephrase legal language to make it more accessible to the reader."
Participant from Yukon Human Rights Commission
-
![]()
"Sessions were well led by presenters who were very aware of the briefing note process in government. This meant I was able to get maximum value from the information."
Victoria Laidlaw, Alberta Education
(5 star Google review)
