Reasons to Write About What You Do

Paul Graham, the famous co-founder of YCombinator, advocates for writing about the things you know. I agree with that advice. Here, I want to emphasize and expand upon some of his points for those in in-house legal roles.

Writing Helps You Figure Things Out

From Paul’s essay:

You can know a great deal about something without writing about it. Can you ever know so much that you wouldn't learn more from trying to explain what you know? I don't think so. I've written about at least two subjects I know well — Lisp hacking and startups — and in both cases I learned a lot from writing about them. In both cases there were things I didn't consciously realize till I had to explain them. And I don't think my experience was anomalous. A great deal of knowledge is unconscious, and experts have if anything a higher proportion of unconscious knowledge than beginners.

Writing Helps Others

Many people are trying to do something professionally they haven’t done before. You've done lots of things. Help them.

Writing Helps Your Career

You can tell people that you know how to start a Legal team, build a good relationship with the Product and Engineering teams, negotiate SaaS contracts, etc. but, better than that, you can show them. An essay describing how to do these things is worth much more than any explanation you give in an interview.

Writing Enables You to Completely Understand a Topic

Again, from Paul's essay:

The reason I've spent so long establishing this rather obvious point is that it leads to another that many people will find shocking. If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.  

It feels to them as if they do, especially if they're not in the habit of critically examining their own thinking. Ideas can feel complete. It's only when you try to put them into words that you discover they're not. So if you never subject your ideas to that test, you'll not only never have fully formed ideas, but also never realize it.  

Putting ideas into words is certainly no guarantee that they'll be right. Far from it. But though it's not a sufficient condition, it is a necessary one.

I Promise that You Have Something to Say

Everyone who has dedicated time to something and done it well, no matter how small, has something to say about it. Have you rolled out a Business Associate Agreement at a SaaS company or written a guide to involuntary terminations for your People team? Write about it.

It’s Easy to Publish

If you’re shy, you can publish your writing internally in your team and solicit feedback. Once you are comfortable with it, you can post it to LinkedIn, Medium, a personal blog, or a legal journal.

Fin.