This is a guide to typography for people who are not professional typographers—namely, lawyers. I assume that your goal is pragmatic: to achieve the best typographic result at the minimum possible cost (= your time).

This website is organized as a set of typography lessons. Rather than group these lessons into topics and subtopics, I’ve put them in linear order from the most basic to the most advanced. I recommend that you start at the beginning. Don’t move ahead to the more advanced lessons until you feel comfortable with the easier ones.

Legal documents lie along a continuum from more typographically flexible (e.g. stationery, internal memoranda) to less (e.g. court filings). Not every lesson here will be suitable for every document. And obviously, if any of these lessons conflict with local laws or court rules, ignore me and follow the rules. But I’ve yet to see a legal document that couldn’t benefit from some extra typographic attention.

I assume that you use Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect to create your documents. While application-specific tips are provided where possible, this website is not a replacement for your product manual. (For those curious, I use Pages on the Mac for my legal documents, except when I need a document with a table of authorities, in which case I use Microsoft Word for Windows.)

Except for a few asides, I’ve avoided extended discussions about the history and theory of typography. I’ve also omitted topics and subtleties that would be included in a true typographic treatise but have little use to the legal practitioner, e.g. applying colors to type.

I link to a number of commercial websites and professional font products. These links are provided as a convenience or because I like the products. I am not paid to recommend them and I have no financial interest in them. Since 1995, the Font Bureau has paid me for sales of my own font designs that are in its catalog. But I don’t promote any of those fonts here, and I have no financial interest in other Font Bureau fonts.

Have fun!