The Goldilocks Brief
So, the nerdgasm continues. "The Goldilocks Brief" could be the name for a best-selling thriller that would make me quite wealthy.
But it’s not.
It’s just the name I have given to one of my brief templates that is not too hot, and not too cold, but (maybe) just right.
In the wake of my Extreme Makeover and Matthew Butterick’s Extreme Makeover of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Comptroller v. Attorney General (pdf), we received several comments along the lines of:
Wow, that’s extreme.
Several even questioned whether there was a happy medium short of going to full on SCOTUS typography with wide margins, 11 point font etc.
There is, and it’s the Goldilocks Brief. After the jump, the Goldilocks Brief is explained.
The Goldilocks Brief is not too much like a typewritten term paper. But it is not too much like a SCOTUS brief either. It's just right.
These are the choices that go into a Goldilocks Brief:
- I use a book font like Century Schoolbook for body text. Footnotes are one or two points smaller.
- For contrast and readability, I use Helvetica for headings
- Double spacing is not required in our trial courts, but a judge might object to single spacing, thinking I was trying to put one over on him or her with excessive length. So I use 1.5 line spacing. It still looks fine but more readable.
- Margins are 1.5 inches on the side to shorten the line length.
- The wider margins and shorter line length and book font all combine (I hope) to make a very readable product.
And with those choices made, THIS (pdf) is what the cover of the brief looks like and HERE (pdf) is an example of body text and headings.
I have taken to using my Goldilocks template in state trial court proceedings where double spacing is not required by rules leftover from the vestiges of the typewriter era. Not only is it highly readable, it seems shorter too, which is a good thing for your audience.
And I just like the way it looks.
What do you think?
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Makes sense. I go back and forth over separate fonts for headings, but I understand why some people like them.
Do you have a template for federal appellate courts? I am still experimenting.
I very much like Century Schoolbook for the text but Helvetica for the headings is not working for me. The headings look smaller and plainer than the text and I don't think that works well. Other than that I like it.
The contrast is probably just as much about taste as quasi-document-design-science.
I'm trying an experiment today with Georgia as body text and Verdana for headings. Not sold on it yet, but the Georgia, which is optimized for screen reading, looks great on the computer.
Regrettably, the federal appellate rules and the Fourth Circuit's local rules do not allow such wonders as the Goldilocks brief. I could get away with the Century Schoolbook font (though I prefer Calisto MT), but the margins and line-spacing are no-gos.
I actually had a brief formatted with double-spaced lines but 1.25" right and left margins, and it looked great. Then I read the local rules, which require 1" margins. The difference in readability was noticeable.
I may have to see if I can start a movement in the Fourth Circuit to adopt local rules similar to the 7th Circuit's for brief formatting. Because, as you know, appellate judges just *love* change.
Kendall, I too obsess about such things but have never had the courage to come out of the closet and admit it.