Giving Better Feedback on a Junior Lawyer Draft

A junior hands up a draft. An hour later it comes back covered in tracked changes, half the clauses rewritten, no note attached. The junior accepts every edit without understanding one of them, and next month produces a draft with the same flaws. Rewriting a draft is not the same as teaching someone to draft. If the goal is a junior who improves, feedback has to explain the reasoning, not just impose the result, and it has to distinguish what genuinely mattered from what was merely your preference.

Separate the substantive from the stylistic

The most damaging habit in review is treating a wrong limitation calculation and a preferred turn of phrase with the same weight of red ink. The junior cannot tell which corrections were essential and which were taste, so they learn nothing except that you rewrite everything. Mark substance and style differently. A missing ingredient of the cause of action is a defect; "I would have said it this way" is a preference. Be honest about which is which, and be willing to leave a phrasing you would not have chosen if it is correct.

Say what was good, so it gets repeated

Feedback that is all correction teaches a junior to fear the review, not to draft better. If the issue was framed well, if a tricky provision was handled correctly, if the research found the controlling authority, say so plainly and specifically. People repeat what they are told worked. A junior who knows their structure was sound will keep building on it; one who only ever hears about failures will draft defensively and stop taking useful risks.

Explain the why behind the big edits

For the corrections that matter, the edit is less valuable than the reason. Instead of silently deleting a paragraph, note why it weakened the pleading, invited an admission, misstated the standard, or argued a point that was better left unpleaded. Pick two or three edits that carry a transferable lesson and explain those fully. The junior does not need a lecture on all forty changes; they need to understand the handful that reveal how you think about the document.

Turn one draft into a reusable lesson

Every review contains a general point buried in the specifics. The junior forgot to check whether the notice period had run; the lesson is to verify every date against its source before drafting. Name that lesson explicitly and separately from the matter at hand:

• The specific fix, for this document.
• The general habit it points to, for the next one.

Over time these habits are what a good junior carries between matters, and they are what your review is really for.

Deliver it in a form they can act on

A verbal blur of comments over someone's shoulder evaporates. Group your feedback by what the junior must do, factual corrections here, structural changes there, the two teaching points at the end, and give it in a form they can work from without you in the room. Then let them revise the whole document themselves rather than accepting your rewrite. A draft they have reworked, understanding the reasons, is worth more to their development than a clean version you produced for them.

Protect the relationship, not just the document

Review is where juniors learn whether it is safe to bring you honest work. If every draft returns as evidence of inadequacy, they will start hiding uncertainty and polishing prematurely. Feedback that is specific, fair, and forward-looking builds a junior who improves quickly and tells you the truth about what they do not yet know. That is worth far more over a career than a single perfectly rewritten draft.