A recent article by appellate attorney Chris Edwards, featured on the North Carolina Bar Association's blog, sheds light on the evolving landscape of legal writing in the digital era.
In his article, titled "Screen Time: Strategies for Effective Legal Writing in the Digital Age," highlighted the significance of focusing on the structure and readability of legal briefs to enhance comprehension and retention. From the article:
For many years, North Carolina’s appellate courts required attorneys to use Courier. For perhaps as long, the Fourth Circuit’s opinions were published in a Courier-type font.
Appellate courts have moved away from monospaced fonts — fonts like Courier — for a reason. “Monospaced” is just a fancy way of saying that each letter or character takes up the same amount of space on a line. Monospaced fonts were designed for typewriters (so, too, was putting two spaces after a period).
We don’t write on typewriters anymore, so we should stop using monospaced fonts. They’re difficult to read. And if you’re in a court with a page limit (rather than a word limit), monospaced fonts take up more space than a proportionally spaced font.
To delve deeper into effective legal writing strategies for the digital age, read the full article by Chris Edwards on the NCBA blog here.
