Let’s see BriefCatch in action on a non-legal document. Take this Gibson Dunn client alert on non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements, a hot white-collar topic these days. We’ll start with the lay of the…
Category: Briefwriting
Ten New Year’s Resolutions: BriefCatch Takes on Two Supreme Court Clerks
Here’s to finessing our writing in 2018! To show that we can all improve, I uploaded to BriefCatch a motion for Facebook filed by two litigation partners who are former Supreme Court clerks (for…
Judges Speak Out Behind Closed Doors: How Your Briefs Might Bug Them, and How You Can Make Them Smile Instead
To help lawyers write better briefs, I recently surveyed thousands of judges, ranging from state trial-court judges to U.S. Supreme Court justices. Their anonymous responses showed surprising candor and consistency. My questions touched on…
A Menendez Muddle?
When I saw on Twitter that Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) had filed a Third Circuit appeal,[1] I started reading the brief in earnest. I assumed that the brief hailed from BigLaw, and likely from…
Was FERC Off? 11 Ways to Benchslap-Proof Yourself
D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman recently benchslapped the government in the form of a one-sentence concurrence: “I wish FERC’s briefing was as clear as Judge Sentelle’s opinion.” My first instinct was to stick up…
Style Lessons from Syed v. State: Eight Ways to Make a Good Brief Great
On my mark-up of the State’s brief, I have a lot to say about how the State handled the facts, the case law, and the overall organization of its argument. Here, I extract eight…
Is the Government’s Brief Fit for a King (v. Burwell)? Three Hits and Three Misses
The Solicitor General’s brief in King v. Burwell, the subsidy case before the Supreme Court this week, is more sure-footed than what the Government penned in the main individual-mandate case. Below I identify three…
That Reminds Me: Examples and Analogies
When Utah sued the federal government over the 2000 census, a census-taking technique called “hot-deck imputation” was on the hot seat. Utah was none too happy to have lost a representative based on its…
Alphabet Attack
It wouldn’t be spring in America without some federal judges publicly criticizing attorneys in a genre now known as “benchslap.” The offended court this time: the D.C. Circuit. The court’s target: acronyms in briefs…
Five Ways to Write Like John Roberts
When Chief Justice John Roberts was a lawyer, he once wrote that determining the “best” available technology for controlling air pollution is like asking people to pick the “best” car: Mario Andretti may select…
Secrets of the Solicitor’s Style: Ten Takeaways
The briefs from the Office of the Solicitor General are peerless, though not always flawless. But does the Office have a true “style”? As Administrations change, so do the solicitors, of course. The briefs in the short…