In football, coaches organize several different types of practices.
The offense and the defense must prepare differently, just as you must prepare a petitioner’s brief differently from the way you prepare a respondent’s brief, or a memorandum supporting a motion differently from a memorandum in opposition to a motion.
Football coaches also have practices for their “special teams,” the teams that handle certain types of plays that occur during most games. For example, coaches will hold a separate practice for kickoffs, for kickoff returns, and for the onside kick. Coaches do this because each of these plays presents special situations not part of the regular play of the game, and each has special rules that govern it. Because these situations are opportunities to score points, or at least to create opportunities to score points, time focused on special teams may mean the difference between victory and defeat.In brief writing, most of the attention goes, properly, to the argument section. But brief writers must pay attention to their “special teams,” too. Different rules apply to various sections of the brief, and the writer must bring different skills to bear in these sections. Furthermore, even though most of these sections are not part of the argument per se, they can have an impact on the argument, either by encouraging the reader to reach certain conclusions before reading the argument or by persuading the reader to take a more sympathetic view of the argument. Although advocacy on behalf of a client is not a game, you can use your special teams to help the court to understand your arguments better. In this way, these sections of the document can have a significant impact on the outcome of the case. This chapter will discuss rules and strategies for writing effective issue statements, fact statements, argument summaries, and point headings.