Thread by @AthulKAcharya

Got a little downtime today so let's talk about something near and dear to my heart: Brief aesthetics. #legalwriting

Briefs shouldn't just be substantively good; they should look the part, too. Why? Because judges & clerks are busy; they _will_ use imperfect heuristics to decide how much time to give your brief. That includes stuff we all hate—like bluebooking—& that also includes aesthetics.

A disclaimer: aesthetics is, of course, a matter of personal judgment. You may find some of the things I'm about to rag on, like big garish underlines, beautiful and soothing. That's your prerogative! What I offer are generalizations about most readers. YMMV.

Here are two pretty briefs, one mine, one @MatthewStiegler's. Note the fonts—*not* Times New Roman. #AppellateTwitter has beat this topic to death, so all I'll say is: Many courts—including the California Courts of Appeal, the Seventh Circuit, and SCOTUS—discourage or ban TNR.

What should you use instead? It's hard to go wrong with a Century style. SCOTUS uses Century Schoolbook (free); OSG uses Century Expanded BT (prettier, imo). CA5 uses Equity, which has the advantage of being nearly as compact as TNR if you're in a court with a page limit.

Another thing: No underlines. You don't see them in books, you don't see them in SCOTUS opinions, and you don't see them in high-quality briefs. Underlines are a relic of the typewriter era. We have better tools: Font size and font weight for headings, and italics for emphasis.

I don't use all-caps because I DON'T SHOUT MY HEADINGS. I Also Abjure Initial Caps, Because They Too Make Sentences, Especially Long Ones, Hard To Read.

A note on sentence spacing: Although the modern thing to do is to use only one space between sentences, I have reluctantly returned to two spaces between sentences, for this reason:

https://twitter.com/AthulKAcharya/status/1397384291684741130

Other minor stuff:
• Use generous margins. I go with 1.3" for 14-pt appellate briefs. Shorter lines are easier to read.
• Fully justified vs. left-justified is a vigorous debate. If you do fully justify, turn on hyphenation!
• Use hyphens, en-dashes, and em-dashes correctly.

In sum: A good brief is a persuasive brief, & a brief that's easy to read & looks like some care went into its construction is—even if only marginally—more persuasive.

If you want to read more about making briefs pretty, I strongly recommend @mbutterick's Typography for Lawyers.