Susan Feibus’s Legal Writing Can Grab Your Attention—Just Like a Novel
Susan Feibus has spent her professional life in places where precision matters and consequences are real. She began her legal career as a criminal defense lawyer when few women doing so. She represented defendants in complex, high-profile cases alongside some of Chicago’s most formidable trial lawyers. It was demanding, intellectually rigorous work, and she loved it. But amidst the trial work and complex motion practice there was another persistent throughline in her legal career.
Writing.
In her third year of law school Susan became a legal writing instructor. This experience fundamentally changed how she understood writing—not as a static skill, but as a craft shaped by process, feedback, and intention.
Over the ensuing decades, teaching, especially writing, remained central to her vocation. The year after she graduated, Susan taught legal writing at Northwestern Law School, and at several Chicago-area law schools after that. She taught trial practice at Northwestern, and advocacy skills through the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. In addition to her teaching, Susan also developed training programs at the law firms where she practiced, focusing on developing strong, thoughtful advocacy skills, with writing first on the list.
Susan’s practice expanded and morphed through the years to include heading an in-house litigation department, complex civil disputes and prestigious federal court monitoring appointments. Even as a young lawyer, she drafted motions and appellate briefs that demanded originality and theory, not templates. One of her proudest professional moments came early, when she devised novel legal arguments, developing theories where none were obvious. That thrill, she says, has never left her.
Over time, Susan noticed that lawyers, especially those less experienced, struggled to produce high quality legal writing. Addressing the problem with lectures and workshops rarely stuck because it did not address the legal writing process and the elements required to achieve excellence. Susan became convinced that the only way to improve legal writing was through sustained, individualized coaching.
That conviction became her next chapter: WriteRight.
After retiring from the practice of law toward the end of 2025, Susan launched WriteRight – Legal Writing Coaching with Impact, to provide one-on-one legal writing coaching. Based on her experience of writing hundreds of prevailing appeals and critical motions and editing countless more, she started WriteRight because she identified a need for personalized coaching for legal writing, especially in this era of remote/hybrid work. Susan’s approach is deliberate and intensive, built around real assignments, iterative feedback, and conversations about how lawyers actually think and work under pressure.
Susan’s pivot is unusual not just because of the niche she’s carved out, but the perspective she brings. Having spent decades in the legal trenches—balancing clients, courts, and impossible timelines—Susan understands why writing can break down when the stakes are high.
Outside of her professional work, Susan’s life is full. An avid reader, devoted theatergoer, and board member of Invictus Theatre, a premier off-Loop company, she married for the first time at 65, a story she shares without fanfare but with evident joy. Travel, culture, and curiosity continue to shape how she moves through the world.
WriteRight’s website shares a quote from Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, that feels particularly apt: “A good brief is like a good novel. It should be well-organized, easy to follow, and interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention.”
It’s a sentiment Susan has spent her career putting into practice, proving that the best legal writing—like a good novel—is built not just on clarity and structure, but on the ability to hold a reader’s attention all the way to the end.