Today’s post by our colleague Rebecca Copeland on her Record on Appeal blog, The Great Font Debate, got us to thinking. Inspired by an Above the Law post that argues that “Times New Roman = I don’t care,” Rebecca writes about the various recommended typefaces for use in briefs. Also, we are in the final stages of drafting a SCOTUS amicus brief, so things like fonts and brief formatting are on our mind.
The Hawaii Rules of Appellate Procedure do not contain any requirements beyond point size, but “deem” Times New Roman (the default font on word processing programs), Courier New (the one that looks like a typewriter), and Arial (the font we use on this blog since as a sans-serif font, it is easy to read on a computer screen) to qualify. We prefer New Century Schoolbook for briefs, since it is a highly readable font when printed. Other courts, such as the Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit, recommend New Century Schoolbook, so we are in good company.
One rub, however. Hawaii courts still have not entered the modern era, and briefs and memoranda are constrained by page limits, not word limits. Thus, a lawyer who is concerned about a brief that may be approaching a page limit must think about typeface, since certain fonts take up more space than others. Courier New is not proportionally spaced, so takes up extra real estate. Text in New Century Schoolbook also takes up more space in a brief than the same text in Times New Roman, so when the page limit is a consideration, we often default back to Times New Roman, which is the smallest of the mainstream fonts. So it’s not that we “don’t care” — we have our reasons.
While we’re geeking out on typefaces, a good read is the Seventh Circuit’s memorandum on brief fonts, posted here. It’s a good primer on how to make a brief as readable as possible.
One final question: why haven’t Hawaii courts gone to word limits instead of the typewriter-era page limits? Hawaii attorneys might recall an infamous case from a few years back where a lawyer who was butting up against a page limit put a substantial portion of his brief in one massive, pages-long footnote since footnotes are single spaced. Needless to say, the court saw through the pretext and was not amused. Word limits would eliminate similar shenanigans and make briefs much more readable.