Commitment Checks for Legal Writing
Here’s an interesting idea (published by the Los Angeles Times):
Rob Harrison, a lecturer in legal writing at Yale Law School, has been using commitment bonds for the last decade to help students overcome writer’s block. Students have given him checks of up to $10,000 written to charity and authorized Rob to mail the checks if they failed to turn in a paper by a particular time. For the first five years, students made the checks payable to charities that they liked, but about five years ago, a student suggested that making the checks out to charities they didn’t like would be an even more effective incentive. The great news is that Rob has never had to mail one of these commitment checks.
