A couple of weeks ago, Emily Barney showed you how to find and use the style tools in Word 2016. But why use the style tools at all? As Emily noted, federal and local court rules often specify exactly which fonts, spacing, margins, and other styles lawyers are expected to follow. But where can lawyers find those rules, and how are they used?
In the video below – an excerpt from a longer video created for his legal writing class — Prof. Seth Oranburg discusses how to apply court rules to a typical brief.
He starts by choosing a font:
He uses Georgia because it complies with local firm styles, and the official court rules for his brief do not specify a specific font. That said, he prefers Times New Roman or Century.
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
Next, he checks the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He learns that the Federal Rules include Form 1 and 2 which describe how a brief’s captions and signature should look. However, beyond this, these rules are silent on formatting.
Form 1
Local Rules
Prof. Oranburg’s brief will be filed in Massachusetts. He next checks the District of Massachusetts Rules for its requirements.
He finds Rule 5.1(a)(2) says:
All papers, except discovery requests and responses, shall be double-spaced except for the identification of counsel, title of the case, footnotes, quotations and exhibits.
Working on a brief or document set in the Illinois federal court? You can find the local rules for the Northern District of Illinois here (see L.R. 5.2). And note that The Northern District of Illinois Bankruptcy court has its own style rules for electronic filing.
For IL state court briefs, check the state court website, particularly Rule 131(a). While this rule is very liberal, judges are likely to have their own rules or even unstated preferences.
Prof. Oranburg’s brief needs to be formatted correctly because he will be filing it electronically using the online PACER system.
Also, briefs that are not formatted correctly may be rejected – a result no client or lawyer wants. As Prof. Oranburg concludes:
Even if a clerk doesn’t bounce a sloppy filing, it’s a bad idea to annoy the court. My general advice about formatting briefs is, if you want to appeal to a judge, research how that judge prefers information to be visually presented, then use Word styles to create a template for all your briefs in that court; courts favor visually appealing briefs.
Now he is ready to format his document to comply with the rules. If you need some help applying formatting styles, be sure to check our online guide.
