New Formatting Rules

I haven’t yet had occasion to file an appellate brief in either the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court this year. But I just noticed the Rules of Court on some formatting issues were amended as of 1/1/20. Typical for California, instead of changing Rule of Court 8.40—which governs the “Form of Filed Documents”—they are instead codified in Rule 8.75 8.74,* which facially deals with the “Format of Electronic Documents.” If we were going to put all the rules on a single issue in one place, we wouldn’t be California.

The changes are generally consistent with the formatting changes applied in Second District opinions since late 2016. 

They call for:

•    Century Schoolbook 13-point font

•    1.5x spacing

•    1 1/2 inch left and right margins, except for quotes and footnotes, 1 inch top and bottom

•    Left aligned, not right justified, text 


*Thanks to the commenter for the correction.

Progress Be Damned....

Khosh v. Staples Constr. Co., No. B268937 (D2d6 Oct. 26, 2016)

Another of D2’s “new font” opinions. I am on record that the Century Schoolbook is an improvement. But I still find the line spacing kind of annoying. It’s not single-spaced with a full break between paragraphs like a Ninth Circuit slip opinion, a Westlaw printout, or a US Supreme Court brief. But it’s also not 1 1/2 like a readable appellate brief. It’s like 1.2, which I find a little distracting for some reason. The paragraph indents are also weirdly large. What’s the point of a 1 1/2” indent?

D2d5 Gets Some Font Technology

State of Cal. v. Superior Court, No. B276233 (D2d5 Oct. 13, 2016)
I like the Century Schoolbook font. It’s relatively spacious and easy to read in a brief. The SCOTUS rules and the Seventh Circuit’s typeface guide suggest it by name, and it’s an option under FRAP 32(a)(5)(A) and Cal. Rule of Court 8.204(b)(2) and (3). I write all my appellate briefs in it, so long as space is measured in a word count and it’s permitted under the applicable rules. It’s also arguably permitted in California trial courts under Rule of Court 2.105, but given Rule of Court 3.113(d)’ monstrous insistence on using page (not word) limits for law-and-motion memoranda, it’s just too much to sacrifice about 12 percent of the Rule’s already tight limit for the sake of having a nice font. (I tried for a few months back in 2011, but ultimately gave up the first time I had to oppose a summary judgment.)

In any event, given the Court of Appeal’s longstanding practice to publish opinions in stodgy Times New Roman, the choice of font on this D2d5 is out of the ordinary. But definitely not bad. Maybe it will be a thing.*

FWIW, this website and the book it is pitching have some great advice on typography for briefs.

Nothing on the merits, thanks. 

*From some subsequent opinions, seems that all of D2 has made the move.