The problems that afflict research memos also afflict other long documents like settlement agreements and contracts. You can adapt this recipe for any of them.
My legal-writing teacher in law school required memos to be formatted in what I would call the classic typewriter layout — one-inch margins on all sides, 12-point font, and double-spaced lines.
But have you ever seen a book, newspaper, or magazine that uses this layout? No. Why not? Because it’s not optimally legible. So why would anyone use it? Because it suits the severely limited capabilities of the typewriter. So if we don’t use typewriters anymore, why does everyone still use this layout?
My thoughts exactly.
before
after
Download a PDF of the book version of this entry
MB, What typeface is used in the “after” version of the memo, above?
FF Tisa, designed by Mitja Miklavčič and available from FontShop.
Thank you so much for including this on the website. May legal writing professors and supervising attorneys everywhere stop asking students/attorneys to subscribe to the old and ridiculous format. In addition to its lower readability, it also wastes about 20% more paper than the optimized version.
These samples are extremely helpful. Although I have the book and will be reading it again (and again), having the PDFs quickly available on the web site makes it easy to pull up a good sample and put a template together—even if the book may be inadvertently left at home!
Absolutely brilliant. One question and one thought: The sans-serif annotations (lower-left hand and upper-left hand corners of page 182) are models of readable “secondary text” (I’m not sure what to call it — but usually used to comment, differ with the text, provide exegesis). In the word-processing context — would one do this with a table and invisible table lines?
My thought is that under certain circumstances — privileged documents, documents discussing information obtained under protective order or referencing classified information — in my view — should at least have a cover page explaining restrictions — or a footer on each page. Bad for usability — but sometimes best practice.
Secondary text that moves with the main text has to be implemented with an anchored text box, not a table. Some modern word processors claim to be able to handle this. I admit I haven’t put them to the test. (The book was made with Adobe InDesign, a professional page-layout program.)
Another reason it’s worthwhile to put restrictions on every page is that documents will get scanned to PDF, excerpted, combined with other documents, etc. You don’t want someone five steps down the line to miss the fact that the text is restricted. Sometimes lawyers accomplish this with the “watermark” function in their word processor, which I’m not a fan of. Better to use the header or footer.