As lawyers, we know that writ­ing is cen­tral to our work. Whether it’s a sixty-page brief for the United States Supreme Court, or a two-line con­fir­ma­tion of a client meet­ing tapped out in an air­port ter­mi­nal, our jobs require a steady flow of clear, pro­fes­sional writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

I’m not here to tell you that typog­ra­phy is at the core of a lawyer’s work. It’s not. But typog­ra­phy can opti­mize that work. All writ­ing nec­es­sar­ily involves typog­ra­phy. And good writ­ing is part of good lawyer­ing. So good typog­ra­phy is too. If you ignore typog­ra­phy, you are ignor­ing an oppor­tu­nity to improve both your writ­ing and your advo­cacy.

This book is based on three core prin­ci­ples.

1. Good typog­ra­phy is part of good lawyer­ing.
2. Typog­ra­phy in legal doc­u­ments should be held to the same stan­dards as any pro­fes­sion­ally pub­lished mate­r­ial. Why? Because legal doc­u­ments are pro­fes­sion­ally pub­lished mate­r­ial.
3. Any lawyer can mas­ter the essen­tials of good typog­ra­phy.

Legal doc­u­ments lie along a con­tin­uum from more typo­graph­i­cally flex­i­ble (e.g., let­ter­head, research memos) to less flex­i­ble (e.g., motions). Not every rec­om­men­da­tion in this web­site will suit every doc­u­ment. Use your judg­ment.

I some­times illus­trate typo­graphic ideas with exam­ples from Cal­i­for­nia lit­i­ga­tion because I’m famil­iar with it. But my rec­om­men­da­tions are meant to be adapt­able to any type of prac­tice in any juris­dic­tion.

That said, this web­site is not legal advice. If what I sug­gest con­flicts with laws or court rules in your juris­dic­tion, ignore me and obey the law — obvi­ously.