Legal Research

"Website Offers Advice on Legal Typography"

Posted by Joe Hodnicki: "In the mid-80s I saw an attorney drafting on a personal computer for the very first time. My first thought was "why the hell do that (!)" because the attorney, a partner, have a great secretary right outside his office door. (My second thought was, "billing time spent formatting the document?"). The attorney practiced labor law in the newspaper industry and saw how electronic composition and layout was revolutionizing the industry but there was no connectivity between this attorney's Epson lapbricktop and our firm's word processing system. At the time, I was still dictating my work product as was almost everyone else who wasn't applying pen or pencil to legal pad. By the late-80s I had a little Apple in my office but still handed dictation tapes to my secretary. Why compose documents when my secretary (Hi, Marj) did it so much better than I ever could. The Apple was great for playing computer golf while waiting for the word processing department to spit out drafts late at night.

As law firm work product transitioned to attorneys using desktop computers for drafting and document production, they still benefited from the professional skills of secretaries who knew how to properly format legal documents. Today? Don't know, but do know law school students have a long way to go before they will format legal documents as well as professional legal secretaries. In addition to the formalities of document structure, law school students and apparently attorneys also need skills in legal typography. Now, there's a website that offers some guidance -- Typography for Lawyers by Matthew Butterick.

Butterick is an LA civil litigation attorney with an art degree from Harvard University. He studied graphic design and typography, and before practicing law, he was a digital typeface designer. From the About This Website page:

Even though the legal profession depends heavily on writing, legal typography is often poor. Some blame lies with the strict typographic constraints that control certain legal documents (e.g. court rules regarding the format of pleadings). But the rest of the blame lies with lawyers. To be fair, I assume this is for lack of information, not lack of will. This website tries to fill that void.

See also Butterick's Why is typography important for lawyers? page. Hat tip to Binary Law. [JH]

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Law Librarian Blog, 25 August 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on August 26, 2009 (boomark / email).