11.7 SUMMARY
Persuasive writing techniques cannot change bad law or weak facts to make a losing case a winner. They can, however, increase your chances of victory in a close case, and, when used properly, establish and maintain your credibility with the court.
Chapter Eleven Review
1. Don’t lie. 2. Exploit positions of emphasis: Locate important information in template items (see Chapter Nine), beginnings and endings of sections and sentences, and verbs. 3. Prefer strong verbs and the active voice, and be mindful of word choice and sentence length. 4. Avoid negative intensifiers (clearly, obviously, of course, it is evident that). Prefer positive intensifiers (specifically, precisely, explicitly), and follow them with the information that shows the reader why the intensifier is appropriate. 5. Use punctuation mindfully: Colons can create emphasis. 6. Make your document look good: Avoid errors and use effective document design. 7. Don’t use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS unless court rules mandate it.
1 See generally Raymond T. Elligett, Jr. & John M. Scheb, Professional Responsibility of Appellate Advocates, 1 Fla. Coastal L.J. 101 (1999) (citing cases). 2Fred I. Parker, Appellate Advocacy and Practice in the Second Circuit, 64 Brook. L. Rev. 457, 462 (1998). 3Sarah B. Duncan, Pursuing Quality: Writing a Helpful Brief, 30 St. Mary’s L.J. 1093, 1101 (1999). 4Leigh Ingalls Saufley, Amphibians and Appellate Courts, 51 Me. L. Rev. 18, 22 (1999). 5Harry Pregerson, Appellate Brief Writing and Other Transgressions, 34 UCLA L. Rev. 431, 436 (1986). 6Saufley, supra note 4, at 23. 7Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Remarks on Appellate Advocacy, 50 S.C. L. Rev. 567, 568 (1999). 8Patricia M. Wald, 19 Tips from 19 Years on the Appellate Bench, 1 J. App. Prac. & Process 7, 11 (1999).
9 Lawrence W. Pierce, Appellate Advocacy: Some Reflections from the Bench, 61 Fordham L. Rev. 829, 835-36 (1993). 10Jones v. Barnes, 463 U.S. 745, 751-52 (1983). 11Jacques L. Wiener, Jr., Ruminations from the Bench: Brief Writing and Oral Argument in the Fifth Circuit, 70 Tul. L. Rev. 187, 194 (1995). 12Parker, supra note 2, at 460. 13See generally Robert P. Charrow & Veda R. Charrow, Making Legal Language Understandable: A PsycholinguisticStudy of Jury Instructions, 79 Colum. L. Rev. 1306 (1979).
14 See, e.g., Joseph M. Williams & Gregory G. Colomb, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace 82-86, 91-94 (10th ed., Longman 2010). See also Laurel Currie Oates & Anne M. Enquist, The Legal Writing Handbook §§ 17.7.6(c), 18.12.5, and 24.6.3 (5th ed., Wolters Kluwer 2010).
15 This point is now a staple for most legal writing teachers. It was famously articulated by Richard Wydick in a law review article that later became a book: Richard C. Wydick, Plain English for Lawyers chs. 3-4 (5th ed., Carolina Academic Press 2005). See also Williams & Colomb, supra note 14, at Lesson 3. See Section 11.4.4(a) below for specific examples.
16 James H. Coleman, Jr., Appellate Advocacy and Decisionmaking in State Appellate Courts in the Twenty-First Century, 28 Seton Hall L. Rev. 1081, 1083 (1998). 17See, e.g., Williams & Colomb, supra note 14, at Lesson 3. 18See Mary Barnard Ray & Jill J. Ramsfield, Legal Writing: Getting It Right and Getting It Written 279-81 (4th ed., Thomson/West 2005). 19Lance N. Long & William F. Christensen, When Justices (Subconsciously) Attack: The Theory of Argumentative Threat and the Supreme Court, 91 Or. L. Rev. 933, 958 (2013). 20Ray & Ramsfield, supra note 18, at 109. 21United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Requirements and Suggestions for Typography in Briefs and Other Papers 4, http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/forms/type.pdf (emphasis added).
22As noted in Chapters Nine and Ten, too much underlined text can interfere with reader comprehension; thus, underlining should not be used for headings, for example. However, I believe that it can be used effectively for citations because the underlined information in citations is rarely more than a few words. 23E.g., Ruth Anne Robbins, Painting with Print: Incorporating Concepts of Typographic and Layout Design into the Text of Legal Writing Documents, 2 J. Ass’n Legal Writing Dirs. 108, 118 (2004) (citations omitted). 24 The Seventh Circuit discourages the use of underlining because it hides the descenders on certain lowercase letters, such as y and g. Requirements and Suggestions, supra note 21, at 5. Ruth Anne Robbins notes, however, that studies show that legibility depends mostly on the shape of the top half of the letter. Robbins, supra note 23, at 117 (citations omitted). This phenomenon would indicate that underlining should not interfere too much with legibility, particularly when only a few words are being underlined. Note that the degree to which underlining hides descenders varies with the font; a Times Roman underline hides more of the descender than a Georgia underline, for example. Of course, you should always obey a court’s local rules and guidelines about typefaces. 25Ronnie Lipton, The Practical Guide to Information Design 113 (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2007). 26Ralf Herrmann, How Do We Read Words and How Should We Set Them?, Wayfinding & Typography (June 14, 2011), available at https://typography.guru/journal/how-do-we-read-words-and-how-should-we-set-them-r19/ (last visited May 28, 2018) (illustrating blurred mixed-case type and all-caps type). 27See also Robbins, supra note 23, at 127 (noting that using all capital letters is “the worst thing you can do if you want your headings to be legible and easy to read”). 28 E.g., Securities and Exchange Commission, A Plain English Handbook: How to Create Clear SEC Disclosure Documents 44 (SEC 1998), available at http://www.sec.gov/news/extra/handbook.htm. See also Robbins, supra note 23, at 130-31. 29E.g., Mary Beth Beazley, Writing for A Mind at Work: Appellate Advocacy and the Science of Digital Reading, 54 Duq. L. Rev. 415, 430 (2016) (“a ‘guide on the side’... ease[s] navigation and provide[s] context.”); Ellie Margolis, Is the Medium the Message? Unleashing the Power of E-Communication in the Twenty-First Century, 12 Legal Comm. & Rhetoric: JALWD 1, 20 (2015) (“creating bookmarks will result in a navigation panel, visible at all times when viewing the document, that shows the overall structure of the document”).