The Volokh Conspiracy - More on Brief Readability and Formatting:

A reader sends this along:

Since you've blogged several times about font and layout standards for briefs, I thought you might be interested in (or maybe just interested in posting about) what I think is a very clear and informative article about how typography and layout affect readability in the context of legal documents. The article is Ruth Anne Robbins, "Painting with print: Incorporating concepts of typographic and layout design into the text of legal writing documents," 2 J. Assn. L. Writing Dirs. 108 (2004): http://www.alwd.org/JALWD/Robbins.pdf

Seems like a potentially useful and practical article on a topic we probably don't think about as much as we should. As one person on an earlier comment board suggested, in the past brief formatting questions were resolved through specialization and the division of labor, so they knew the answers to all of these questions. But now we do it ourselves, and we may not think about some of these practical questions.

	[Todd Zywicki, July 13, 2005 at 6:36am] Trackbacks More on Brief Readability and Formatting: A reader sends this along: Since you've blogged several times about font and layout standards for briefs, I thought you might be interested in (or maybe just interested in posting about) what I think is a very clear and informative article about how typography and layout affect readability in the context of legal documents. The article is Ruth Anne Robbins, "Painting with print: Incorporating concepts of typographic and layout design into the text of legal writing documents," 2 J. Assn. L. Writing Dirs. 108 (2004): http://www.alwd.org/JALWD/Robbins.pdf Seems like a potentially useful and practical article on a topic we probably don't think about as much as we should. As one person on an earlier comment board suggested, in the past brief formatting questions were resolved through specialization and the division of labor, so they knew the answers to all of these questions. But now we do it ourselves, and we may not think about some of these practical questions. Related Posts (on one page): More on Brief Readability and Formatting: Supreme Court Briefing Rules: 7th Circuit Rules on Brief Formatting: