When you hear the name George Conway III, do you think “Kellyanne” or “That Twitter Guy”? My goal is to make the association “Peerless Securities Litigator” or “Crack Legal Writer.” After all, Mr. Conway figured in my Point Made long before he became a household name.

Let’s take two routine briefs Mr. Conway signed at Wachtell: a reply brief in a case about quartz countertops and a motion to dismiss for Lionsgate.

And now let’s turn his work into five great writing takeaways.

1. Order Out of Chaos

With readers more impatient than ever, what’s easy on the eyes is all the rage: tables, pictures, bullet points, numbering, wide margins, oversized fonts, and headings and subheadings galore. Yet if you go too far, you can make readers dizzy: Who wants to slog through subheadings “A.” and “B.” and “C.” in just a few paragraphs?

To the rescue: inline subheads. They’re sleek and discreet. And Conway seems to love them.

He gets a two-for-one in his reply brief below. Conway first organizes his analysis through a helpful numbered list (green), and then he returns to each item through a matching inline subhead (blue). The subheads are stylishly formatted in bold italics and end with a period or question mark, not a colon.

2. Lighter Than Air

Organization is key. But is there more to Conway’s style than stylish subheads?

Surely. Here’s a challenge. If I tell you that most of the best writers, legal or otherwise, favor light sentence openers over “Furthermore” and “Consequently” and “Pursuant to,” what would you guess Conway had in place of the highlighted language below?

Curious to see what Conway wrote instead each time? Just click below and watch the transformation. You’ll feel lighter than air.

3. Story Time

It’s not easy to muster up passion, even manufactured passion, for the scienter standard or the distinction between an investigation and an administrative proceeding.

Like all the greats, though, Conway overcomes the challenge by slipping many story-telling techniques past the fortified formality of briefs.

First, he conveys a sense of time through words, not dates:

• “little more than a month before the settlement”

• “the SEC settlement that went through five weeks later“

• “announced the final settlement the next month“

• “some four days after the SEC settlement was announced”

Second, he has a knack for vivid verbs:

• “both hinge on a pair”

• “ask this Court to indulge“

• “attempts to bolster“

• “That suffices to defeat”

• “get no traction from quality”

• “turns on the difference”

• “regurgitates a lot of facts”

• “double down on their claim”

• “no facts to back that”

Third, he’s not afraid to be conversational:

• “that simply does not cut it“

• “for a couple of reasons“

• “and this is the clincher“

• “which brings up the main point“

• “not a whit“

Finally, he has a feel for the rhythms of speech. Just look at the build-up to the one-word sentence below!

But on what factual basis do plaintiffs claim that quartz—a heterogeneous category of rock—is “a fungible commodity” in the way that, say, soybeans and sweet crude oil are? None.

4.  Mind Meld

Lively thinking prompts lively transitions. Precise, varied, generous, and vigorous transitions are hallmarks of first-rate analytical writing. Of all the factors that combine into our five BriefCatch scores for legal documents, the quality of transitions has one of the highest correlations with the writer’s reputation.

True to form, Conway floods his motions with all sorts of intricate logical moves married to transitional devices that weave the argument threads together.

Here’s a transitional cloud I created from Conway’s two motions. Inspiring, no? Be sure to exercise moderation even if so: adding one new transitional device a week is plenty.

5. What’s Right Is Right

Legal analysis can drag both writer and reader into the weeds. The rituals of analogizing and distinguishing can become ends in themselves. That’s why it can be particularly persuasive to take a step back and explain why a rule or doctrine makes sense. Conway does that effectively in the Lionsgate excerpt below. He argues not only that a regulation doesn’t require disclosure but that it shouldn’t:

For reasons unrelated to his day job, Mr. Conway is likely the world’s most glamorous securities litigator, and he might be the world’s most controversial one as well. Writing reply briefs isn’t glamorous, I admit, but I hope that this much isn’t controversial, either: whatever you think of Conway’s Twitter missives, he is one heck of a legal writer.