Customer Reviews

Typography for Lawyers

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There are two things lawyers use daily: a chair and a word processor. Smart lawyers get comfortable with both. For me, adjusting my chair is straightforward. Adjusting my word processor (and my word processing habit) is not.

Butterick helps you make the adjustment from the typewriter rules that you learned in school. As a result, your documents will have predictable style. Your document's style will clearly guide your reader. Will this make your document more persuasive? Yes, with surprisingly little work.

If you are still not sure whether you should buy this book, just spend a little time at the companion website: typographyforlawyers.com. The advantages of the book over the website are three: better guidance for choosing a professional font, more examples of before/after, and word processor specific advice. The only thing missing is CLE credit.

Finally, I spent about 2 hours on the website and 4 hours with the book. This included the time spent modifying my default templates, fiddling with word processor defaults, buying & installing fonts, and incorporating the advice into my workflow. Looking at documents that I create now, I feel great about the return on the time invested.

This is a book that every lawyer should own.

Lawyers prepare many papers, but rarely have solid information on how things should be arranged. They don't know about the best practices that have developed in the centuries since Gutenberg. Matthew Butterick supplies that information. In 200 easily-read pages, he explains what typographers have learned about how text should be arranged.

For example:

* Add only one space after periods. There is no good reason to add two spaces.

* Use real "small caps," rather than imitation ones created by your word processor.

* Use italics, not underlining.

* Never use courier as your font.

* Use Times New Roman only if you are absolutely required by court rules.

There is much more. Read about the book on his web site, [...]. And then buy the book.

This book gives great guidance on everything from how to format dashes to how to find the ideal line spacing. Another interesting feature is an annotated guide to the pros and cons of various fonts. The author even offers alternatives to Times New Roman and other popular fonts that the Seventh Circuit and other courts have criticized.

One of the most interesting observations comes at the end, where the author notes that the bland, homogenous appearance of most filings stems not from court rules but from the "bandwagon effect." Butterick encourages lawyers to explore instead the "typographical latitude" that nearly all courts allow. The endgame, he reminds us, is to make filings readable, if not enjoyable.

I also appreciated the hints on letterhead and business cards, Bryan Garner's witty foreword, and the author's pervasive passion for his subject.

All in all, a terrific resource that is sure to become the definitive guide to typography in the legal profession and perhaps beyond.

This book is a masterpiece.

I discovered the website typographyforlawyers.com when it first launched. I'm not a lawyer, but it was the best guide to typography I'd ever seen.

The book is like the website, but bigger. It's concise and extremely intelligently written. (I see that the author was a Harvard-educated expert in typography before becoming a lawyer.)

A tip for lawyers: I'm not a lawyer, so I struggle to determine whether a lawyer is any good--so I judge you by the things I can discern. If your documents are typographically shambolic (loads of rogue spaces, spelling mistakes, using hyphens instead of em dashes, etc.) I assume that this sloppiness extends to the legal aspects of your work. Perhaps I'm wrong to do so--but I guess that's your problem, not mine.

I got this book less than a week ago and finished reading it last night. If you are a student of plain english for your writing style, don't miss this unusual book. I spent about 2 hours today with a focus on revising my two major documents and checked out the fonts the author clearly loves. Us lawyers are professional writers and it is time we did ourselves justice. Buy the book. I only hope the author will develop a future edition with sections on powerpoint and typography for the readers of wills and trusts, my area of focus.

The book will be a classic for the progressive attorney. I put down a favorite fiction writer's book to read Typography and, believe it or not, found this book fascinating. I'm not sure exactly why. But, if you sit and write all day, as I do, as an attorney, why not improve your work product? It takes some focus to achieve.

I recently purchased this book and I am very glad I did. I have been practicing law for almost 20 years, and I can say that in the modern legal world, often your first impression of attorneys is through written documents. It could be court pleadings, discovery, letters or even e-mails. It is amazing to me how ugly and unreadable many legal documents are.

That is what this book is all about. I can tell you that after reading this book, I am going to go through and review every document that I have in my library, and I'm going to make sure that I implement many of the rules as outlined in this book. I thought my written documents looked fine, especially compared to some other documents that I've seen over my years of practice, but after reading this book, I can tell that my documents are deficient in many respects.

I bought this book from Jones McClure publishing, not really knowing what I was getting. In fact, once I received the book, it sat on my desk for three or four weeks before I actually even looked at it. Now I am completely obsessed with how all of my documents appear!

When I file a motions, pleadings and briefs with the court, I want them to be easy to read and to understand. We have all seen those documents that have paragraphs that go on and on and on and that never get to the point. Documents can also be ugly, and there are still attorneys and law firms out there that use the Courier font! Nothing is more painful to read that a long document with long paragraphs in the Courier font!

You will not go wrong buying this book, and it does not matter if you are a solo practitioner or you're a partner in a big law firm. Whatever your legal practice is, you will learn something from this book, and if you implement the suggestions, you will be very pleased and so will the recipients of your documents.

If you are an attorney you owe it to yourself to get this book. If you're law student, get the book now, and learn from it before you start practicing. It might even help you get a job in the crowded legal profession.

I just wish the appellate courts would read this book and implement the suggestions!

This is an outstanding book and I highly recommend it.

Excellent! If you only adopt one or two suggestions from this book, your writing, and more importantly, its presentation will improve exponentially. BUT one word of warning, buy two books, because as soon as you share this book with another lawyer (or anyone who writes for a living), the book will be lifted from your hand, never to be seen again. That's what happened to me, and why I'm back to buy another copy. Matthew has done a great job, the book is written well and will be a boon to the folks who read any of my letters, pleadings and grant proposals from now on.

Stories are powerful tools for prioritizing and communicating complex ideas. Notice it or not, the typography is part of the telling. It adds emphasis, or not. It leads the eye smoothly down the page, or not. It communicates clearly, or not.

That the typography shapes and shades your message is undeniable. And therein lies the necessity for knowing how it works.

Your brief is brilliantly argued. But the 'look' of it is the very first thing that the trial judge sees. Crafted properly, the typography tells him that you're serious and should be taken seriously. Page after page, the typography visually reinforces your message that your client is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

The book has a companion website at [...] that allows you to plug in a 5-digit code and see examples of different fonts onscreen. You can also download a variety of sample documents in PDF format. The book and website work splendidly together.

I bought the book. I stayed up late reading it. Eventually, I'll wear it out and buy another copy. In the meantime, I'll be recommending it to friends and colleagues without reservation--you among them.

Back in the late Stone Age,one of my partners in my mid-sized firm was in charge of all things technical. His philosophy was direct, "We are lawyers. We write for a living."

When I left the firm in the mid-eighties to start my own practice, the age of the PC had begun. Unlike my old firm which had separate billing and word processing computers ("If we can't bill, we can still write" was another maxim), I billed and wrote on the same PC. Billing was after all just another form of writing. Writing, even for trial lawyers, remained a central function of what we as lawyers do.

So after twenty plus years as chief cook and bottle-washer, it was time to look again at how the written word affected my practice, which is to say, my livelihood. Typography for Lawyers explains how to maximize the impact of what you write in pleadings, briefs, correspondence, billing and even email. There are rules here. some are self-evident-like avoiding system fonts (which means Courier). Others are pretty obscure-extra character spacing for All Caps and Small Caps.

Ours is a verbal profession but our work is often reflected in typography. This is a great reference tool whose lessons I will be implementing across the board over the next few month.

What a revelation this book is! So many books on legal writing drone on and on about the same old things--don't use block quotations, write in the active voice, use adverbs sparingly, etc.--but this one tells you how to make your memos and briefs look aesthetically pleasing through typography. (And the book itself is laid out beautifully.) Unless you are a graphic designer or typesetter, the discussion of things such as em dashes, leading, and fonts isn't intrinsically exciting. The author here, though, makes this material an interesting read. Every lawyer should have this book on the shelf right next to The Bluebook, the ALWD book, and Garner's Red Book. It's terrific.