David Stewart 0:01

Welcome to the podcast. I'm David Stewart, editor in chief of Tax Notes Today International. This week: a word about writing. Writing is an essential part of both our professional and personal lives. Whether we're composing a text or drafting a scholarly paper, say on taxes, the written word is one of humanity's most powerful tools. But there's a different style, tone, and set of rules for different types of writing. Just as a professor is unlikely to respond positively to a paper laced with emojis, our friends would probably not appreciate a text message stretching to 5,000 words. Here to talk about the basics of writing successfully in the professional and academic world is Tax Notes Executive Editor for Commentary Jasper Smith. Jasper, welcome back to the podcast.

Jasper Smith 0:46

Thanks, Dave. Always happy to be here.

David Stewart 0:48

Now, could you tell us a bit about the guest you recently spoke to and what you discussed?

Jasper Smith 0:52

Well, I was able to speak with Allison Christians, who many may be familiar with. She's the Stikeman Chair in Tax Law at McGill University in Montreal. She's also a longtime writer for Tax Notes, and she currently writes a column for Tax Notes International called "The Big Picture." Allison and I spoke about her recent article on writing good papers in law school and about the writing process in general. And I think as you listen in you can really hear her passion for writing come through so it should be a real resource for listeners, regardless of their level of writing experience.

David Stewart 1:22

All right , let's go to that interview.

Jasper Smith 1:25

So, welcome, Allison

Allison Christians 1:26

It is great to be here, Jasper. Thanks so much for having me.

Jasper Smith 1:29

And thanks so much to you for taking the time to talk with us today about an article you wrote recently on writing good papers in law school. As a publishing organization, and I speak for myself and the commentary team here at Tax Notes, we certainly are always interested in anything that promotes quality writing. So, we're excited to have you on to discuss not just specific points from the article, but writing in general.

Allison Christians 1:51

Well, it's one of my favorite subjects: writing. So, writing about writing and talking about writing about writing is kind of a meta great fabulous thing and way to spend our time. Thanks.

Jasper Smith 2:00

So, to get started, can we just have you tell us a little bit about what led you to write this paper on how to write good papers in law school?

Allison Christians 2:07

Alright, well, this is an easy one. So, it's a good place to start. So, obviously, you know, I'm a professor. So I profess a lot. And what do my students do? Well , they write a lot for me. And so, every year I have students writing: writing for class; writing term papers; wanting to write thesis papers; some doctoral students who have to write basically a book over the course of several years. So, writing is something that is just part of teaching. You're reading papers all the time. So, I actually started writing this little thing about writing in response to kind of common things I was saying over and over to students. It's like, "OK, I keep telling you the same thing. I keep saying it again." And so eventually you just think, "OK, I need to explain this in writing." And then it's one of those things where you start, you can't stop then. Because the next crop of papers, you add something else to that and you add something else. And pretty soon you have kind of a full, almost a manifesto of — well, one could call it rules for good writing, but it's also almost the opposite. It's here's some traps to avoid.

Jasper Smith 3:07

Well, it's certainly a great article. I know reading it myself, I was thinking, "Do I do that?" So, I think it goes beyond law school. So, for those who haven't had a chance to read it, can you give us a quick recap of the paper? And if you want, maybe highlight some main points that you want people to really hone in on.

Allison Christians 3:22

It's pretty basic. It's style. It's substance. It's a little bit of "Don't do these things. These are maddening writing tics." And some of it is kind of assurance really that you have a process. You might not realize what your process is and having some recognition of your process will help you improve it. So, I just start off, well you can see that there's a little table of contents and it gives you structure first and then substance and then style. So, this lays out in my mind, if you're going to only work on one thing, work on structure first. If you get structure down, then it's time to move on to the substance. Make sure that your argument is complete and accurate. And then finally, the style is to get that writing to the next level. So, I would say you can start at the beginning and if you only get through the first one is organize your argument. If that's the only thing you get through, please at least just do that. And you will find that once you do that first step, that first step is the hardest one. Once you get past that first step, the next step is a little easier. And I think as you go, they get a little easier until the very end. And now we're just talking make it aesthetically pleasing. And that's easy to do relative to the first one, which is organization.

Jasper Smith 4:34

No, I saw that as well. I really appreciated it. You kind of wrote it — the first thing I saw as a recurring theme was keep reading your article over and over again. And as you do, hone in a little bit more or funnel it down into these points and get more and more precise and improve it with each pass.

Allison Christians 4:48

It's because the big project of writing is communication. And I really want students, especially, to understand that when you write, you're speaking ideas to the universe and you're learning as you go. And what's the product of that? What are you trying to say? And unless you work on how you communicate, you, I think, can leave some very unfinished ideas in the universe. So, a lot of this is just trying to teach students that the way you get to be a better writer, to be an effective communicator, is to revisit and think about the way you're putting those ideas together. And try to think of it from the perspective of the reader. The poor reader, who has to work so hard if you decide not to. If you say, "I have so many ideas here, but I can't get it together. I can't figure out what the thread of this is. Oh, I'll just put it all in the paper and the reader will figure it out." Well, no thank you, I'm saying on behalf of readers everywhere. Not interested in trying to figure out what your argument was for you. That's your job as the writer. And I think really that's the motivation here in basically all of the particular rules.

Jasper Smith 5:54

I think that's fantastic. And I think the underlying theme there is simplicity, right? And, as you wrote in your book, and I think you cited, too, "Strunk and White's Elements of Style." And I always remember: omit needless words. Omit needless words, so.

Allison Christians 6:07

Yeah, I mean in life, too. It's sort of the harder the argument is, the more complex the idea is, the more important it is to figure out how to say it in a way that your reader can understand it so that they don't have to spend so much time parsing what you're saying. But then, you can lead them through to the conclusion you're trying to take them to. Because, don't forget, this is for law students, right? So, you know, what is the practice of law? Well, it's persuasion. And so, your goal in communicating is to be persuasive in the things you say, so that people will want to agree with you. Especially judges, deciders of your fate, and in tax law that can include the Internal Revenue Service or in Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency. Right? It could include a decision maker that isn't ready to hear your beautifully constructed legal argument. But is ready to hear you say, "Well, this is really simple. Let me make it easy for you." There's a gift to that. And if you can hone your skill at that , I think you can become a really effective advocate.

Jasper Smith 7:04

To the point that you write the way you write, or you have freedom of style, obviously, if you read, for instance, our publication, there are a myriad of different style and authors have a number of voices that they use. And we don't try to take that away, but there's certain fundamentals that you have to, for lack of a better term, master before you can start freestyling.

Allison Christians 7:21

Yeah, that's true. I think I'm never more pleased than when I see a letter to the editor of Tax Notes International complaining about something I've written saying, you know, "Allison is so wrong," or "I totally disagree with Allison." I'm pleased to get those because it means a person read it. And they understood what I was saying enough to disagree with me, and then come back with something to say. So, I need to know my audience for Tax Notes International. My audience is a different audience than the one when I'm trying to write a more general law review paper. I'm trying to get at people who have a certain expertise. I have to speak to them where they are and about the things that they care about. And I can't dwell on things that I might spend more time on in my own writing that I think are important, but isn't really going to affect where they are and isn't going to appeal to them as readers. So, I have to think about that audience. And sometimes that's hard. That's really hard to do. And I think this is maybe the unstated rule in the paper is if you don't know how to write, then what you have to do is write. You have to write more and keep writing until you figure out, "Oh yeah, that didn't make sense at all. I wrote that to the wrong audience." Or "I didn't write that in the right way and that audience couldn't respond to it." And that just takes practice. But what else does it really take? What is most writing really take? It's that you actually want to communicate something. You're trying to communicate something to someone else. Not because you're trying to tell them something that they don't know, but because you're trying to engage. So, that's why I like those letters when they come back, because they're showing me that I have engaged with somebody. You don't have to agree with me in order to engage with me. Good writing should be able to create that space for engagement. That's the great thing about having different venues to write in.

Jasper Smith 9:03

Fully agree with that. And it's interesting that you mentioned the articles that we publish because obviously those have gone through an extra layer of editing by professional editors, not yours, probably less than some. I'll just put it that way. But at the same time, you do have another person who's looking and saying, "OK, let me analyze all of the things that's kind of mentioned in your article." Yeah, and in that regard, just talking about students in general, how would you suggest they get that extra set of eyes, if you will? Is it a professor as a resource?

Allison Christians 9:30

Interesting. So, you're a student and you've written a paper that's for a class. You usually have an audience of exactly one, which is your professor. So yeah, you can be sort of talking, screaming, at the void really. Because as a professor, if I have 60 students in the term, the chances that I'm going to do two or three reads of every paper are pretty slim. Right? That's hard for me. I will try, but I don't always succeed. So, who can you go to? So, here's what I would say most of the time as a student, you're writing a term paper, not very many people are going to have time or inclination or ability to read it. But here's the thing that you can do to always improve your writing. You can explain that idea to somebody around the dinner table. Explain it to your family members or your friends and say, "OK, I'm writing this article. This is what I'm writing about." And then as you try to formulate the words, the first time you go through that, you won't even be able — you'll have no idea. "I don't even know what I'm writing about anymore. I lost it. I thought I knew. I have this whole paper. It's 30 pages long. I have no idea what it's even about because I can't figure out how to serve it to you verbally." But if you do this a few more times, you will not only figure out what it is you were trying to say, which will help you edit yourself. But you'll probably get some good feedback in terms of how logical that argument is. You may not get substantive legal feedback, but you will certainly get, "Well, I don't get it. What are you saying?" And every time someone says "I don't get it. What do you mean?" That's a gift to you because then you get to articulate it a different way. So, that to me, if you can't get somebody to read what you're writing, grab them and tell them what you're writing about. And I can tell you, even after almost — what is it — 17 years of teaching and writing, I still take my ideas home to the dinner table. My kids are pretty grown up now. One of them can very quickly tell me, "Oh, I don't like this idea at all." Or "Wait a minute. That doesn't make any sense to me." And then I'll have to say it a different way. And that older kid of mine is responsible for more than one of my title changes. Because he'll be like, "Why are you giving so many long words in the title? Just call it 'blah'". So, he doesn't know anything about tax where he knows very little about tax. He doesn't know any more than he could possibly avoid knowing about tax. But he can still be that sounding board and articulating your ideas always makes them better.

Jasper Smith 11:40

That's wonderful advice. That makes complete sense. Now, we've talked several times about this article being written again as an instruction for academic papers. But do you think there would be different considerations when it comes to papers written for other purposes? Particularly, again, as lawyers, maybe briefs, legal memos, even professional publications, such as ours?

Allison Christians 11:58

Going back to that idea that who should read this paper, should it just be students or should it be people who write professionally? Well, OK. I would say 90 percent of it is broadly applicable to anyone who writes. And I think the reason that I would say that is that all writing shares that one thing in common, which is that you're trying to communicate, you're trying to engage somebody. And one of the things I say is to think about what you're trying to say, but also, why are you trying to say it? Are you trying to sound like the smartest person in the room? Are you're trying to take up all the oxygen so nobody else can have a chance to say anything? Why do you think anybody would voluntarily subject themselves to that kind of writing? And I think that goes across all forms of writing. So, if I'm a judge and I'm reading your brief, I want to be persuaded that you're being careful about the things you're saying. You're not exaggerating. You're not leaving out important things. Or you're not trying to minimize something that shouldn't be minimized. But that you're taking it seriously and that you're engaging it. I don't want to read a brief where you're trying to take up all the oxygen and tell me how smart you are. Right? So, I think that kind of advice goes across. And writing, man, writing is hard. It is hard work. It is a slog. Very few people can write down a perfect sentence the first time. And so, the advice to think about what devices you're using to persuade, I think runs across the legal writing area.

Jasper Smith 13:20

How would you respond to critics who might say long-form legal writing, especially in academic context, it's not as important as it once was?

Allison Christians 13:27

Yeah. I would say unequivocally, that's wrong. It is important. And why is it important? Why is long-form and legal writing important? Here's why: Law is trying to accomplish things that are complicated, really tough. And they involve balancing interests and balancing cultural, social, political, economic, normative — all kinds of aspects of life. Right? So, to think that what we should do is get rid of rigorous thinking in favor of something short, Twitter-worthy, is a mistake. So, I think of the writing process and the way I do writing as you have to do all of those things at the same time. You have to dig deep into things that are obscure, hard to understand, hard to connect the dots, things about which you don't know all of the ins and outs, and you have to do some research. You have to engage in that stuff. It's a deep dive and it's hard work and it's boring. And sometimes the things you write are not going to be appreciated by more than one or two people. If you're lucky, five at the most. And then you have to come back out of that and say, "OK, now why was I looking at that problem? What is it about that problem that intrigued me? Why did I spend time reading through all of that stuff that only myself and I can persuade maybe one or two people to be interested in that?" And you say, "OK, well actually there is a good reason I'm interested in that," and try to figure out what that is. For me personally, that interest that motivates basically everything I write is the distributed impact of all of the rules that we write. The rule of law. So, I'm interested in how law mediates wealth distribution. How law produces wealth distribution across and within societies. So, all of the questions that I ask about how does this rule work are ultimately trying to work out what are the implications of that rule for people? So, I think you don't get the tweets and you don't get the blogs and you don't get the sort of knowledge d issemination idea unless you do that deep dive long-form. So is it dead? No! It's the basis for developing nuanced thinking about difficult topics. And that is the project of law.

Jasper Smith 15:28

I think you articulated that wonderfully. And the only thing I would add is that you mentioned in there that it is hard. It is difficult. It does take a time commitment. And anything that is difficult and takes effort can be a differentiator for you. Like, if it was easy to sound cliche, everybody would do it. Right?

Allison Christians 15:45

For sure. This is how you know you're a tax lawyer. OK, I'm going to tell you. This is how you know. You are the person who, when all reasonable people would say, "This question is no longer interesting. And I no longer want to know the answer to it." You keep going. That is the moment you know you've found your correct area of law to study. In my case, tax. You're the one constructing the spreadsheet at three in the morning, putting the numbers in there, trying to figure out how does it work? You're the one still reading through that same statute. After every reasonable person would have turned the lights off and went home, you're still there? You've got the right profession. Is it easy? No. You and I could come up with on this call 10 things that I could have been good at that would have been way easier than international tax, especially at the pace that it's been going in the last five years. It's hard. And a lot of it is meaningless. I'm sorry. I really like the transfer pricing guidelines. But you try spending some time with them. It's not fun to read these things. It's not fun to sort through words that don't have any meaning independent of the context in which you find them. And it's not fun to try to find principles in the middle of all that, right? It's hard. But if you are still doing it when all reasonable people would have stopped, then that's what you were supposed to be doing. And now you've done that. You know something that a lot of people don't know. Why wouldn't you want to share that knowledge with the world? Get out there and write a paper about it and see what you learn by writing.

Jasper Smith 17:06

And I would say that for someone like you, who is able to do the non-fun work and then articulate it back in your articles, which are enjoyable, are engaging, and we appreciate that. And you've added something to the world.

Allison Christians 17:17

That's the goal. So, any time you sit down and start writing, you know the first thing you're going to do when you start writing is you're going to start learning. And learning is hard work. You have to focus on it. You can't just kick up your feet, look deep into a flower, and know what to say. That's not how it works. You have to put effort into learning. And when you learn, then you know something you didn't know before. And then you start looking around like, "Huh. Am I the only one that didn't know this? OK, that's possible." It could be that everybody knew this. And I'm the only one that didn't know. But on the off chance other people didn't know either, I'm going to write this out in the way that I understand it. And then the worst case scenario, the worst thing that could happen is I could be wrong. And then hopefully I will have written it in such a way where somebody will come back and tell me, "Here's the three or 10 or a hundred reasons why I think you're wrong." And then I'm going to get chance to think about it some more and learn a little bit more. If you're not doing that, then there's no point in writing.

Jasper Smith 18:10

Fantastic. And do you have any final comments about your article, student writing, writing in general? Anything you just wanted to add?

Allison Christians 18:17

Well, I can say that the world of ideas is really an inspired and rare world. It's hard because it's worthwhile spending time in that world. And a lot of people will try to push you out of that world. "Well, you can't do this. It's not practical." Or "It's not going to work." Or "I don't understand it. I don't like it." Or "That's not how we do things." Or "That's not how we've always done things." But the world of ideas is one in which you say, "What if we did that anyway? What does that look like?" And I appreciate nothing more than seeing someone playing in that world and sharing that with me. So, I love to write because I am working as much as I can in that world of ideas and I want to engage other people there. It's a great place to be. And I love to see students try to jump in there. So, I just encourage it. I would love to see just more writing by everybody all the time. And since that's not possible, just reach out, talk through your ideas with people, and develop your voice. Because everybody that's in this business has something to contribute. Whether you can write it in a tweet or you can write it in a long-form article, I accept both forms. And I just love that idea that we can meet together in that world of ideas.

Jasper Smith 19:29

That's a view that definitely reverberates with me and I think with many others as well. And I think they'll really appreciate everything you had to say. And of course, reading this article and others that you have. Is there anywhere you might want to direct our listeners to that they might be able to find you?

Allison Christians 19:43

For sure. Yes . I put all of my articles, links to everything that's available online, on my website, which is allisonchristians .com . I'm on Twitter at @ ProfChristians. I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me there. I'm on Instagram, but barely post anything there. But mostly I hang out in the pages of Tax Notes International. Read my next article, whatever that might be.

Jasper Smith 20:02

And I was going to say, you can certainly find that at taxnotes.com and here on our YouTube page Tax Analysts. So, thanks again, Allison, always great to talk with you and hope to speak with you again soon.

Allison Christians 20:13

It was a real pleasure. Thanks so much.

Coming Attractions with Faye McCray

David Stewart 20:16

Now, coming attractions. Each week we highlight new and interesting commentary in our magazines. Joining me now from her home is Acquisitions and Engagement Editor in Chief Faye McCray. Faye, what will you have for us?

Faye McCray 20:26

Thank you, Dave. In Tax Notes Federal, , Stephen Giordano explains how to navigate the rules on real estate investment trusts regarding investments that are not readily classifiable as either debt or as equity. Paul Oosterhuis and Moshe Spinowitz argue that the taxation of royalties received from controlled foreign corporations is one thing that Treasury got right with the foreign tax credit system under the TCJA. In Tax Notes State, Ted Friedman, Michael Hilkin, and Peter Hull discuss the current state of procedural affairs in New York regarding COVID-19. Darien Shanske and David Gamage discuss how states could borrow funds in the absence of federal aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Tax Notes International, Rick Minor discusses the European Commission’s recently issued tax action plan. Tatiana Falcão considers how to achieve a coordinated approach to the uniform application of unilateral digital services taxes. And on the Opinions page, Martin Sullivan examines the economic stimulus effect of President Trump’s executive memorandum on deferral of payroll taxes and provides possible answers to several open questions about the move.

Speaker 1 21:35

You can read all that and a lot more in the pages of Tax Notes Federal, State, and International. That's it for this week. You can follow me online @TaxStew, that's S-T-E-W. And be sure to follow @TaxNotes for all things tax. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at podcast@taxanalysts .org . And as always, if you like what we're doing here, please leave a rating or review wherever you download this podcast, we'll be back next week with another episode of Tax Notes Talk.