Commentary: Form and Substance: Typography and Style in Missouri Appellate Practice

Lawyers like to believe that only the law and the facts matter.  If you have the stronger record or the closer authority, surely the court will decide in your favor.

But especially with appellate courts, too often we forget that judges and clerks are humans.  They read thousands of pages each year under constant time pressure.  Because of this, how your briefs look and sound matter greatly, too.

Typography and rhetoric are not afterthoughts.  Especially within the dense, complex form of an appellate brief, they are key parts of advocacy, too.  Missouri’s rules leave room for choices that can signal care, credibility, and professionalism, or the opposite.

Typography as Advocacy

Rules 84.03(c) and 84.06 require appellate filings to be made electronically as searchable PDFs with margins of “not less than one inch” and “line spacing not less than 1.5” except for captions, headings, longer quotations, and footnotes.  Rule 84.03(b)(3) mandates that for all documents the “font, including footnotes, shall not be smaller than 13 point, Times New Roman,” but does not mandate which font it should be.

That flexibility creates opportunities and risks.

Times New Roman, Microsoft Word’s default font from 1992-2007, is the most common offender.  As one typographer noted, “Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a color.”  Narrow, cramped, and never designed for screen reading, its use signals a lawyer who accepted the default rather than thinking about the reader.  Readers notice.  Better choices include:

• Century Schoolbook, long favored by courts and required in the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Georgia, widely available and excellent on screens, where most judges and clerks now read.
• Book Antiqua or Palatino Linotype, which are highly legible.

So, as a rule, stop using Times New Roman.

Spacing matters, too.  Appellate judges and clerks often read briefs on tablets; a wall of text in tight font is physically harder to read.  For effective advocacy, your brief should be as comfortable as possible for the reader to digest.

So, avoid full justification of type, which creates distracting “rivers” of white space.  Instead, stick with left alignment, which ensures all spacing is uniform.  Respect white space: margins, line spacing, and paragraph breaks give the reader’s eye a place to rest.

Set line spacing manually.  Pounding the Microsoft Word “double space” button actually creates about 240 percent spacing, which is too wide, and its “single” spacing is too narrow.  If your font is 13 points, manually set spacing to 26 points for double spacing, 17 points for “single” (which will actually make it a readable 130 percent).

Rhetoric and Style

If typography gets the readers to engage, style keeps them there.  Missouri appellate opinions increasingly model a clear, direct prose style.  Briefs that echo that rhythm are more persuasive.

Plain English: Avoid legalese whenever possible.  Strike “Comes Now,” “wherefore,” “pursuant to,” and “instant case” from your vocabulary.  Use direct, declarative sentences.  As I tell my associates and clerks, if you’re writing something a certain way because “that’s how lawyers write,” don’t write that way!

Short sentences and paragraphs: Modern appellate opinions often move briskly, one idea per paragraph.  Lawyers should do the same.  Use the topic sentences of your paragraphs as heading, such that if a reader read only the topic sentences, your paragraphs would flow as a chain of logic.

Headings as advocacy: A heading that just says “Error” wastes space.  A stronger heading is, “The trial court abused its discretion by excluding the defendant’s only expert.”  Headings should carry argumentative weight.  As with the topic sentences of paragraphs, your headings should read as a chain of logic.  Put them in the brief’s table of contents to provide a direct summary of your arguments.

Tone: Appellate judges and clerks dislike sarcasm or exaggerated outrage.  Even when reversing, opinions rarely scold trial judges.  Lawyers should avoid invective.  Professional, measured prose reads as confident, not timid.

Facts as story: The statement of facts in an appellate brief is often the most important section.  Judges and clerks sometimes read it first and form impressions.  A clean, chronological, non-argumentative narrative as a linear story with citations after every sentence can shape the reader’s entire view.

Summarizing: An appellate judge once advised me, “Don’t be afraid to spoon-feed us.”  Each argument section should be summarized at the beginning.  A reply brief should summarize the opening brief (yes, a minority of appellate readers read the reply brief first).  Don’t assume that everyone reads linearly.

E-Filing formatting: Appellate e-filing requires searchable PDFs.  Save your PDFs directly from Microsoft Word.  Don’t print and scan images, which look unprofessional and careless.  Invest in Adobe Acrobat Professional.  Make sure your PDF pagination matches your document’s pagination.  Set bookmarks for all sections and subsections of a brief and make the bookmarks panel open when the PDF opens.

Record citations: All statements of facts and arguments in briefs require precise citations to the legal file and transcript (e.g., “D25 p. 4,” “Tr. 123”).  Formatting citations consistently makes them easier to locate.

Length vs. brevity: If possible, shorter is usually stronger.  As one guide I read said, “It is called a ‘brief’ for a reason.”  Missouri appellate judges and clerks see hundreds of briefs a month.  A tight, well-spaced 30-page brief feels more persuasive than one that maxes out page limits with filler.

Unwritten preferences: Do the most to offend the fewest readers.  Some judges prefer briefs without footnotes, which are harder to read on screens, so avoid footnotes when possible.  Others dislike long block quotes, so avoid them when possible.

Where Typography and Style Meet

Typography and rhetoric work together.  A beautifully written sentence loses power if hidden in a dense block of Times New Roman with full justification.  Conversely, clean fonts and perfect spacing cannot rescue archaic, wordy legalese.

A short, active sentence in a clear font, set off in its own paragraph, lands with force.  A heading written as a persuasive proposition, styled in a legible typeface, guides the reader.  A statement of facts that reads like a story makes the reader want to keep reading.

Appellate practice is persuasion on paper.  Every choice – font, spacing, word, phrase, either sharpens or blunts the argument.  Too many lawyers mistakenly treat typography and rhetorical style as afterthoughts.  In Missouri appellate practice, where the rules leave lawyers free to choose, those details can separate a forgettable brief from a persuasive one.

Jonathan Sternberg is an appellate lawyer with Jonathan Sternberg, Attorney, P.C., based in Kansas City.