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: Legal Blog Watch

Keep It Brief: Supreme Court Trims Length of Reply Briefs

By Bruce Carton

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The U.S. Supreme Court announced last month that under new rules taking effect Feb. 16, all reply briefs filed with the Court must fit under the 140 character limit of Twitter. Actually, it did not say that, but the Court is moving in that direction, as its new rules require lawyers to keep their reply briefs at the merits stage to 6,000 words instead of the previous limit of 7,500. The Court's new 6,000-word limit for reply briefs was discussed in this post by Tony Mauro on the Blog of the Legal Times. In an explanatory comment on the change, the clerk of the Court said the Court was returning to a length close to what it had required in earlier years when it used page limits rather than word limits. The clerk explained that ?[e]xperience has shown that the increased volume limit has allowed for the filing of some briefs that repeat previous arguments rather than address only new material presented in intervening briefs.? Mauro reports that some practitioners believe shaving 1,500 words off of their replies will be difficult due to the growth in the number of amicus briefs that are now filed. Mayer Brown partner Evan Tager...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on February 04, 2010 (boomark / email).