Cover Up: Your Lawyer Is Showing
On how professional conditioning shapes creativity, and why that’s not a flaw.
Over the past few weeks I have been writing for Elevare and I couldn’t help but notice a pattern. Every time I try to write something personal or creative, my inner legal mind rises like a well-trained reflex.
“Relevance.”
“Scope.”
“Hearsay.”
What begins as a reflection quickly turns into a closing argument: thesis stated, rebuttal presented, conclusion neatly tied in a bow with evidence. I can’t help it. My inner lawyer is showing.
Years of legal education, teaching and in-house compliance work left their mark. I’m not a practicing lawyer, but those habits don’t fade when you leave the classroom; they follow you into every sentence, every strategy, every conversation.
It made me think: has all this legal and policy work killed my ability to write like a human?
Leading with your defense already drafted is helpful in leadership; it’s protective, precise, even sanitised. But it also teaches you to tidy the mess before you’ve understood what it means.
Writing for the hostile reader
There is always the pre-emptive counter-argument. Those of us with compliance, legal or policy backgrounds often write as if we’re already on trial. We anticipate objections and pre-emptively defuse them, long before anyone has even disagreed. I often think about the role of social media in all of this. Last week I caught myself pre-emptively disclaiming an observation about women and aging, not because the disclaimer added clarity, but because I’d already drafted the hostile response in my mind. The piece was weaker for it. I’d edited for the critic before the curious reader even arrived.
In short, writing for the hostile reader is excellent in a regulatory setting and as a preemptive defense for the hostile person on social media. But in writing, or leadership communication, it can sterilise the human side of thought. Sometimes it’s okay to let people meet you mid-argument, to let them question or even critique you.
We don’t always have to close every gap. Sometimes the space between statements is where your audience enters the conversation.
“In certain contexts”, “However”, “Typically”
Each one is a tiny shield against the possibility of error. We think we’re adding nuance, and we are, but at scale, these micro-hedges remove the fire and add distance. They make even strong ideas sound tentative. We are so afraid to be wrong.
In leadership, certainty doesn’t mean inflexibility. It means speaking clearly, trusting your foundation, and being open to correction later.
You can always edit a word; you can’t edit the impression of doubt. It reminds me of a leadership lesson from a CEO who used to mentor me in my startup days:
“You can be right. You can be wrong, but you can never be in doubt”.
Addicted to evidence.
Can we make a claim without citation? We were trained to substantiate everything.
Three hundred footnotes in thirty pages? Naturally.
Does this leave room for originality? Very little.
But not everything worth saying can be proven immediately. Some insights begin as intuitions, not data points. I trust my instincts entirely in decisions, but trained legal thinking won’t let me write that way. The instinct must become an argument before it earns a sentence.
In academia we often need to come up with something new to land our thesis with the highest distinction. Legal training goes exactly against the creativity required to do so. There is little room for flair.
Creativity, leadership, and even policymaking all require a moment of leap before the landing.
The inner PR review
Everything goes through a mini-PR review. Even when I write something personal, the internal audit begins:
“How might this sound out of context?”
“Could this be quoted back at me? If so, what would it sound like?”
That instinct is protective and sometimes necessary, but it also blunts the edges of a piece that would otherwise be sharp. Not every thought has to be ready for publication in The Economist. Can we sometimes publish the work in progress? The legal mind answers firmly:
absolutely not.
Perfection reassures, but imperfection connects.
How Legal Training Shapes Argument Itself
What gives us away most isn’t the tone; it’s the rhythm. We tend to write like we are building a case:
1) present an idea
2) imagine the rebuttal, and
3) then deliver my counter-rebuttal to close.
It’s the architecture of legal reasoning: assertion, objection, resolution.
This is great for signalling credibility In law and policy. It is not so great for curiosity in creative outputs.
When we tie everything up neatly, there is no room left for the reader to draw their own conclusions. It makes it much harder to disagree with you. It stifles the dialogue that often leads to better outcomes. Not every idea needs to end in closure; some should end in conversation.
When Structure Becomes Strategy
Here’s the paradox: the very instincts that stifle spontaneity are what make us trusted leaders.
In diplomacy, compliance, and executive life, the ability to qualify, anticipate, and substantiate is what keeps organisations credible and decisions sound. It helps people make sense of your decisions.
But there’s another kind of authority too: the kind that comes from showing your thought process instead of just your verdict. This creates new leaders and gives people a look into your mind. We show the architecture of the building, scaffolding and all.
When to give it a rest
The goal isn’t to unlearn your legal thinking; it’s to know when to let it lead and when to let it rest.
Ask yourself:
Persuasion or exploration?
If persuasion, use the structured voice.
If exploration, loosen it. Do you have the best idea already, or should this be a discussion?
Protecting or connecting?
If you’re shielding your message, it’s time to open a window. Are you hedging out of fear? Little good comes out of letting this emotion guide you.
Right or useful?
The best ideas are not always airtight.
No risk, no reward.
Sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is leave a few lines unfinished. It invites others to step in, to think alongside you. Some of the best ideas come through participation.
Beyond the Law
And it isn’t just legal professionals. We all show traces of the systems that trained us.
Consultants leave fingerprints of frameworks: “The Big 4 alum who can’t give feedback without a 2×2 matrix.”
Academics, of citations: “The PhD who treats every LinkedIn post like a lit review.”
Engineers, of precision: “The CTO who debugs conversations.”
The question isn’t whether they show, it’s whether we know when they’re in charge. True creativity plays with structure, it doesn’t have to reject it altogether.