The font of your choice says a lot about your professionalism. This gets a bit confusing given that fonts are often modified and used as part of a larger design. Both are fine, but we recommend starting with size 12 and enlarging them if you find the font too small. These days, most law firms use sans serif fonts as the font style of their website content because they attract and influence potential clients. Since we know that the content written on the website is the main factor in driving traffic and making it more professional, they need to be designed and written with better fonts. The Legal policy is the font you use for your legal documents. This includes your briefs, memos and court documents. Serif fonts have tails and are mainly used for newspapers (Times New Roman) and print media, while sans serif fonts are tailless and are usually associated with websites. Serif fonts usually represent a modern image of the law firm, and serif fonts associated with newspapers are more of a classic or traditional image.
Serif fonts include Cambria, Georgia, Garamond, Book Antiqua, and Didot. Sans serif fonts include Calibri, Helvetica, Verdana, Trebuchet MS and Lato. By ensuring that your legal documents are as readable as possible for your clients, other lawyers and judges, etc., you show that you care about the user experience. This contributes to a positive brand perception of your law firm. But that doesn`t mean judges want it that way. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, for example, advises lawyers against using Times New Roman. (See pages 3-5 here) The Connecticut Court of Appeals actually requires that the memoirs use Arial or Universe. And the United States.
The Supreme Court has long required lawyers to use a “Century family” typeface (e.g., Century Schoolbook). When writing legal documents, what works for one document may not work for another. After Covid-19, customers have become familiar with online reading and tend to read documents on their mobile phones. It states that it is important to improve and optimize legal documents to make them readable on any device. Sometimes the courts also set rules for the best fonts to use in legal documents or on law firm websites. Keeping in mind all the considerations and best practices, this article highlights the best legal fonts and their sizes for legal documents. Copyright is a form of legal protection for those who create original works. Finally, among federal courts of appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court specifically requires that petitions and briefs be written in a “Century Family” font. These include Century and Century Schoolbook. And it`s worth noting that many law school casebooks are printed in Century Schoolbook, giving the police an authoritative vibe.
So you really can`t go wrong using Century Schoolbook in all your briefings – unless a local rule prohibits it. Whether you work for a small law firm or BigLaw, using the right font can better appeal to your target audience and boost your firm`s credibility and reputation for professionalism. It is an important tool to create your brand and publicize the name of your law firm. (Just know that the correct answer for a law firm policy is never Comic Sans.) Your right to sublicense a policy is governed by the EULA. Among other things, you can legitimately print any glyph on a printer, scan the image, and then track each image on your computer (none of this would involve copying the software or program representing the fonts). When it comes to court decisions on legal document policies, it`s always good to see which font is recommended by the court in that jurisdiction. To give an example, the U.S. Supreme Court requires lawyers to use “Century Family” fonts for all briefs, while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit suggests that attorneys should not use Times New Roman. The Virginia Supreme Court also issued a list of acceptable fonts for briefs and other documents. The Florida Supreme Court also issued new appeal rules for policies to be used by lawyers. These rules require lawyers to use Arial or Bookman Old Style with font size 14 to check readability on monitors.
But there`s a lot of confusion and misinformation about fonts, fonts, and how designers and marketers can legally use them for commercial purposes. Technically, serif fonts have decorative frills at the beginning and end of the sign. Sans serif fonts (meaning “sans serifs”) don`t have this oddity. You can even get away with Times New Roman if you`re using an older version of Word and aren`t ready to change the default font. (Word changed its default font to Calibri in recent versions, a font conspicuously absent from Virginia`s list.) Two months ago, on March 16, the DC Circuit issued a notice on “favorite fonts for memoirs,” in which the court “specifically advised against the use of Garamond” because it “looks smaller” and less “readable” than typefaces such as Century and Times New Roman. This sparked a discussion about #AppellateTwitter, preferred fonts, and short writing in general. And now that the outbreak has subsided, it seems the time has come to provide a quick overview of police requirements and recommendations across the country. “When Times New Roman appears in a book, document or advertisement, it means apathy. He says, “I submitted to the source of the least resistance.” Times New Roman is not a font choice, but the absence of a font choice, just like the darkness of deep space is not a color.
To watch Times New Roman is to look into the void. The software that tells your screen or printer to display a letter in “Helvetica” is the font. You could spend your entire legal career without thinking about policies.