Here is my LinkedIn Article about why I do it and you may want to as well – this is the professional side

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/legal-publishing-why-i-write-books-mental-health-law-anita-szigeti-h4iwc

I will follow it up with the backstory of my entire publishing career here later, including how each important book was conceived and brought to life.

Enjoy!

For now here is the text of the LinkedIn Post

July 11, 2024

I am often asked why I engage in legal publishing and how I manage to do so so prolifically.

It’s true that I am now, 30+ years at the bar, the very proud co-Author and a General Editor on FIVE legal texts on mental health and the law. I can honestly say that each experience in conceiving, writing, editing and publishing the volumes has been an extraordinary & unique journey. While there may have been ups and downs, I do not regret any of it and have learned a great deal.

In this article for LinkedIn, I want to highlight the benefits of choosing to publish legal texts and why lawyers should consider doing so in their own areas of expertise. On my personal blog I’ll fill in some blanks about how each book came to be and why – there are loads of anecdotes and much drama – or what my teenagers would call “tea” that probably belong nowhere, but some personal reflections can grace the blog. You can look for the backstories, if you’re interested, when I get the time to reflect more, here: https://anitaszigeti.wordpress.com/

For now, let’s focus on how you come to be a published author and why it’s a really great idea not just for your career – but for you as a lawyer, a writer, an educator, and a mentor.

How to Get Published in the Law

Step 1 – Develop an Area of Expertise within the Law

You’re not going to have a successful legal publishing career unless you have something new or interesting to add to the existing masses of legal texts out there. The most obvious thing is an area of specialty in the substantive law. Mine is mental health. Doesn’t actually have to be an area of law, per se, however. You can develop expertise in a specific skill. For example, Kyla Lee and her excellent book on the Pinpoint Method of Cross-examination. I bought a book on Objections!! that I really love. There are books on how to write an Affidavit. New lawyers have no idea how to do most things we as senior counsel take for granted after learning on the job. But a helpful Guide is, well, helpful. See? I have really learned how to write well over the years…..But the main thing is have something to say, that will fill an existing gap, that will be useful for readers, something you realize your colleagues would draw benefit from learning, from you.

Step 1 – Envision a Product

You literally should have a vision of what this book will look like. Personally, I like to imagine the outside as well as the inside, but this isn’t strictly necessary. My proudest moment, actually, in my publishing journey, is getting a photo credit on the cover of our latest book, CAMHL (the Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law) – features a picture I took on my iPhone on a family trip home to Budapest, Hungary, in August of 2018. Special story to this one:

More important, obviously, is what’s inside the book. Imagine what you want to share with the legal universe. What content is not already available, what unique insight and wisdom do you have, what topics can you cover in a thoughtful way others may benefit from? What book would you want to see available to you to help you in your legal work? What would have been helpful to you starting out in the legal field within which you currently practice?

Step 3 – Develop an Actual Product

Once you figured that out, draft a preliminary Table of Contents. First a more general outline, then fill in the subheadings. You want to have an actual product ready to pitch!

Step 4 – Find Your Friends and Colleagues to Collaborate With

This could just be me, but I hate working alone. Even if I end up doing all the heavy lifting, or have the first big idea or write the lion’s share of the material, I still want a team around me. I personally like community and I do better when writing with and for others, even within just my own author group or editor team. I imagine there are some lawyers out there who work better alone. If that’s you, obviously publish alone. Personally, I would not like that – because I’m an extrovert, a collaborator, a mentor now, but was once a mentee who really benefited from guidance on clear writing and how to educate effectively. I have both learned and taught and actually most often both, at the same time.

Step 5 – Find a Publisher and Pitch Your Product

This takes some research. All the different legal publishers have different strengths, profiles, cultures and characteristic branding and appearance. One may suit you best or others may not suit you at all. I like a number of publishers, but it is LexisNexis Canada Inc. who has consistently, from the start, supported my publishing journey and focused on my area of mental health and the law. Doesn’t mean I don’t think Emond’s Criminal Series looks really pretty! All credit, as it turns out, to Danann Hawes in both cases.

Once you find your favourite legal publisher, approach them to explain where the gap is in the available texts and how you intend to fill that gap. Go to it!!

Why I write Books on Mental Health Law

Legal Publishing has huge benefits not just for readers of the learned volumes, but in my experience, for the authors.

Let’s first start with what the reasons not to engage with legal publishing are. Short list: MONEY. This is not a lucrative business for lawyers. The amount of time you’ll spend is much better devoted to billable work – if money is what you’re after.

But there are loads of good reasons to do it. Here are mine:

1. Getting all that Knowledge out of your head and onto Paper

Pretty self-explanatory. By the time I published my first book, there was SO MUCH law about consent and capacity in my head, I was fairly desperate to put it all out there in a concise one-stop shopping venue. When you put pen to paper like this, it’s an amazing relief and you can empty your head of all the details as they’ll always be available to you later. In YOUR book!

2. Having a place to Refer Daily Inquiries in your subject area

By the time I published my first book, I was getting daily phone and email inquiries generally beginning “I got a guy…..”. Returning these inquiries was sucking up a huge amount of my time. I found that founding volunteer lawyer organizations to build specialized communities, as well as publishing books, gives people looking for advice somewhere to turn where they’ll have access to your expertise but without you having to explain everything from scratch. Saved my life.

3. Keeping Yourself Current Within Your Specialized Area of Law

I find that writing these books and updating them, whether annually or once every 3-4 years, as the case may be, helps keep me current in my own specialized field. I review every important case, maybe even every case and amendments to relevant legislation. Having to do this for publication ensures I remain an expert in mental health and mental disorder. Substantively, this has been a huge leg up for me and an important, interesting way to learn.

4. Improve your Research, Writing and Editing Skills

Writing legal texts engages a very different skill set than writing legal memos, opinions or appeal facta. My research, writing and editing skills are a thousand-fold improved since I started on my publishing journey. Add to that, I am proud that my contributions to the literature are plainly written enough to make sense for the practitioner but yet creatively enough drafted, that they’re not boring. Well, at least not to me. I take pride in no typos…

5. Make new Friends For Life and Have Fun Working with Your Cherished Colleagues

As I invite new lawyers into the publishing mix with new projects and even venture outside the law to mental health professionals and others, I have made many new friends and strengthened existing professional and personal relationships. I tend to keep such relationships for life, so this is a beautiful byproduct of the collaborative team approach I employ. Priceless.