Wayne Schiess

Wayne Schiess teaches legal writing at the University of Texas School of Law. He directed the legal writing program from 2004 to 2016 and has been teaching legal writing at Texas Law since 1992. Here’s how he got there.

Wayne grew up in a small town in Idaho and attended a small high school that offered no Advanced Placement courses. When he arrived at college, his roommate was surprised that Wayne was taking first-year English. “Didn’t you take A.P. English?” the roommate asked. “What’s A.P.?” Wayne replied.

This wasn’t auspicious for a future writing teacher, but despite this lack of early opportunities, Wayne eventually discovered that he liked writing and writing clearly. He came to value clear writing through the influence of his mother, who returned to college to finish her English degree when Wayne was 17. That’s right, his mother was an English teacher! (although by the time she finished her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and began teaching English at Boise State University, Wayne was away, finishing college).

After college, Wayne attended Cornell Law School and took a job in the Dallas office of Baker Botts, where he tried a transactional practice and later did some bankruptcy work. Mostly, he wrote a lot of memos. In 1992, he was lucky enough to land a job teaching legal writing at Texas Law, and he’s been there ever since. He now devotes himself in a nerdy, mildly obsessed, and always enthusiastic way to legal writing. (Professionally speaking, of course. In his personal life he's devoted to his spouse, children, and grandchildren.)

At Texas Law, he teaches analytical legal writing, persuasive legal writing, legal drafting, and plain English. He’s a frequent seminar speaker and has published dozens of articles on practical legal writing skills, plus several books:

• The Legal Memo: A Basic Guide
• Better Legal Writing
• Legal Writing Nerd: Be One
• Plain Legal Writing: Do It
• Fine Points for Legal Writing
• Writing for the Legal Audience
• Writing for Litigation (3d ed. 2024) with Kamela Bridges

His blog, LEGIBLE, was named one of the ABA Journal Blawg 100 in 2007 and was chosen for the Texas Bar Today Top Ten Blog Posts 56 times. For 16 years he wrote a monthly column on legal writing for Austin Lawyer magazine. In 2010, his work on the Texas Pattern Jury Charges was recognized by the Center for Plain Language, and in 2012, 2015, and 2017 he was selected as the Texas Law Legal Writing Teacher of the Year.