Tips for Attorneys: Getting Your Documents Read
May 12, 2008
We all know about the power of the written word - after all, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” But the words we write don’t do much good if people don’t take the time to read them.
There has been a large amount of research done on how different fonts affect how people read a document, both in print and on the computer screen.
- Text Font Readability Study
- Typeface Readability
- Readability - making pages easy to read by design
- Literature Review - Serif vs. Sans Serif Legibility
Although many of the articles linked here are primarily concerned with legibility on the web, the same rules apply to people reading documents on a computer screen - and it is important to note that different rules apply to the computer screen as opposed to the printed page.
Font, Typeface, What’s the Difference?
Generally speaking, there are two types of fonts - Serif and Sans Serif. Serif fonts are the “classic” fonts, like Times New Roman. They are the fonts you typically see in newspapers. “Serif” refers to the little flowing marks at the edges of the letters. Sans-serif, on the other hand, simply means “without serifs.”
Serif fonts tend to work best in print; sans-serif fonts work better on-screen (and especially when the size of the text is small).
Although we highly recommend reading the articles linked above, here is a summary of the tips they offer for making sure your documents are actually read:
- Use an appropriate font - serif for print, and sans-serif for on-screen reading.
- Choose and appropriate font size - a small font may let you cram more information onto a page, but a larger font makes it easier to read.
- Don’t use lots of different fonts - it is visually distracting. Use just two or three fonts, at most.
- Use fonts consistently - use one font for body text and another for headings. Don’t swap the two half way through your document.
Don’t go overboard with bold, italic, and underline emphasis. If you need to emphasize an entire sentence, try using bold instead of underline, as it is easier to read and is less visually jarring.- If your document will be read on the computer or on-line (such as a web page), avoid using underlining - people will mistake it for a link that they can click on.
- Left-aligned text is easiest to read. Justified text (where the computer automatically adjusts spacing to make each side of the paragraph line up) is only effective with really long sentences, and the uneven spacing can make it hard to read.
- Don’t write entire sentences or paragraphs in ALL CAPITALS. It decreases the contrast between letters, making it harder to read. If you must draw attention to a section of a document, consider using a box to draw an outline around the text, or (if your document will only be viewed on the screen) use a background color.
- If you have long sections of your document, consider breaking it up a bit - use headings and sub-headings to break up long sections of text. Newspapers and magazines - whose livelihood depends on people actually reading their text - know this better than anyone. They will go so far as to take a quote from the text and put it in the margin in big letters, just to break up a long expanse of text.
If you follow these simple tips, you can ensure your documents are both legible and easy to read - which helps ensure that they actually are read. After all, you’ve gone through the trouble to produce your document with the expectation that it will be read - you might as well take a few extra steps to help make it a little easier on your readers.
Verbal Branding and Productive Interactions
June 7, 2007
By: Stephen Melanson
Do you realize it took until 1977 before attorneys could advertise their services legally?
David L. Hudson Jr., a First Amendment Center research attorney (www.firstamendmentcenter.org) tells us, “(In 1977, the Supreme) Court first determined that attorney advertising was a form of commercial speech entitled to some degree of First Amendment protection in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona.”
Prior to that, he writes, the law said, “A lawyer shall not publicize himself, or his partner, or associate, or any other lawyer affiliated with him or his firm…”. Only business cards were an acceptable form of promotion.
Things have changed.
With consolidation and the overall ability to differentiate from each other diminishing, law firms are getting more and more attentive to their marketing efforts and brand identities.
For now, let’s focus on branding, and a curiously hidden element of it: verbal interactions as a brand building tool. Imagine how you’d feel if every time someone in your firm spoke to someone outside it, you lost money and your brand was diminished.
That sounds pretty awful. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly uncommon.
Most organizations, as far as I can tell, don’t recognize that direct contact with the public, i.e., actual conversations, represents the front line of their brand, and that these interactions must be managed as branding activities.
From over twenty years of varied business experience, there’s one thing I’m quite sure of: the last people to be trained and given a full understanding of an organizations’ value and brand positioning are, quite surprisingly, those on the front lines of direct customer contact.
That’s not only a shame and a lost opportunity, but it literally stands branding on its head.
Given one regrettable interaction, some clients will remember it the rest of their natural-born lives, and to them it’ll symbolize a firms brand from then on. (If you doubt this, ask an unhappy client what your brand is. Often, they’ll be most upset about an interaction they had with someone on the staff.)
It’s bad for business and, well, just bad for everybody. Therefore, verbal branding ought to be a management priority and a critical training issue.
Before we continue, let’s establish some philosophy: No matter what you do, you can only count on your audience (the public and individuals) remembering one or two things about your firm—period!
I know this to be true, and I can’t overstate the importance of understanding this going in, so you’ll develop your messaging correctly.
With this in mind, how confident are you that an initial contact with someone is promoting your brand effectively? Or for that matter, think about your web site – another type of “interaction” – and if a visitor will leave the site remembering what you want them to?
Without this effort to manage what people remember about you, especially through verbal contact, your brand could be diminished every day and potentially with every conversation.
Yes, it’s a scary thought. But as I mentioned, at some companies it’s happening right now, everyday.
Consider: Do you really need to tell people so much during a first conversation? Are questions of any kind likely to take you “off message,” never to return? If so, maybe you haven’t really found your best brand message. And by the way, does the home page of your web site really need to be that busy? It’s probably diluting your message.
Let’s get back to the central point. What do you really need someone to know – or if you will, remember – so each direct interaction is as productive as possible? The idea of “productivity” is an important one to verbal branding. An interaction is productive to the degree that people remember what you want them to, whether it’s a day, week, or month later.
When you’re compelled to tell your audience every detail of your organization and service, it simply means your verbal branding needs work.
As Vincent Gardenia said in Moonstruck, “That’s all I’m saying; I’ll say no more!”
Let me describe a productive business environment from a verbal standpoint: each interaction has a foundation of just a couple of central concepts; your answers to questions support, and track back to, those concepts rhetorically instead of diverting from them; and when anyone in your organization is asked, “What in the world do you guys do?” they understand what needs to be communicated, and they can do it with simplicity and confidence – every time.
Is it less exciting? Maybe. Does it work? Definitely.
Plus, the entire staff now has more confidence and the relief of knowing what to say. That’s how you generate more revenue, increase market share, and build your brand on a daily basis, conversation by conversation.
I like a quote by Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team:
“If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Stephen Melanson is a brand and positioning consultant, specializing in verbal brand development and teaching its application.
Email: stephen@melansonconsult.com
Collaborative Practice, A new Approach
May 3, 2007
Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Dan Tremblay.
Collaborative Practice is an alternative dispute resolution method originally developed for resolving Family Law disputes, particularly Divorce, but could be applied to most civil areas of law. Those who practice collaborative law have seen the negative effects on their clients and on themselves of traditional litigation. Stu Web, an attorney who was “getting pretty sick of it,” decided there must be a better way of handling divorces. He started experimenting with a different approach where “settlement only” lawyers formed an agreement with their clients that they would not litigate and if any party decided to litigate or the process failed, the agreement required the attorneys to turn the case over to litigation lawyers. Thus Collaborative Law Practice was born.
There are no time standards except those imposed by the clients themselves. There is no need for the traditional discovery. The entire discovery is conducted voluntarily in four way meetings with the attorneys and parties; there is no need to “hide the ball” as happens in traditional divorce and civil proceedings. The meetings are considered settlement proceedings and therefore confidential. The speed of the process is dependent on the parties and therefore they manage the cost and length of time it takes them to come to agreement. The product of these meeting is an agreement. In the case of a divorce the agreement and joint petition can be presented to the court.
In addition, allied professionals are used to help facilitate the process. In divorce, coaches, neutral child and financial specialists help expedite the process by advising as necessary to help overcome obstacles and impasses in divorce cases. By adding these experts to the process, the parties address their whole situation instead of focusing on only the legal aspects of the divorce. The direct benefits are the speed of the process and therefore the savings in cost to the parties; confidentiality, especially where divorce proceedings will be available online to the public at some point in the future; and the maintenance of the relationship between the parties, important especially where children are concerned. It is recognized that not all parties will be right for this process, but most will be good prospects for this less adversarial process.
Consider joining this paradigm shift in the legal process by taking the Collaborative Law training and joining the Massachusetts Collaborative Law Council. Find out more information at www.massclc.org. If you are a divorce lawyer, your clients and their children will be glad you did and you will find a new, more rewarding way to practice law. This process has been so successful with divorce that it is now being used for other civil adversarial processes as well especially in Business, Labor and Probate Law. Reference: The Collaborative Way to Divorce, by Stuart G. Webb and Ronald D. Ousky.
A new Lawyers Best Friend – Pre drafted legal forms
October 31, 2006
A newly admitted lawyer to the Massachusetts Bar, has several options upon receiving his or her license to practice law. They can apply for an associate position with a big firm, and conduct research for the next five years; they can apply to work in a small firm and do all the work the senior lawyers do not want to deal with; they can hang their own shingle. This article will take the perspective of the later, i.e., a recent law school graduate with an entrepreneurial spirit, a little cash on hand, and a desire to start his or her own practice.
Forget about the fact that marketing and obtaining clients is going to be the most difficult aspect of the new venture. Forget that the new attorney must choose an area of practice, for even a general practitioner can’t work in every field of law. Once the client walks in the door and the attorney wants to accept the case, the flood-gates of paperwork will open.
The first document a new lawyer must draft is a fee agreement. There are several internet sites out there that have these types of legal contract, as well as other legal forms, but those legal documents are very general in nature and likely do not satisfy the Massachusetts General Laws. However, a quick look in any Lawyer’s weekly will show a host of legal software companies who have created word documents drafted specifically for Massachusetts, or what ever state your practice requires.
Next is the whole process of filing a complaint or answer if a law suit is involved, drafting HUD statements if real estate is the issue at hand and so forth. One new Massachusetts Probate Attorney, recently said, “I didn’t know where to start before I had the direction of my document generation software and my online research tools”. She went on to state that, “but for the form generating software, I would have had to consult for hours the Massachusetts Practice Series and other form books”.
Once a case has been filed, the real onslaught of paper work and forms hits the fan – DISCOVERY. There are interrogatories, request for production of documents, requests for medical records, requests for police reports, subpoenas’ for depositions, etc. There are motions for summery judgment, motions to compel, and so many more. A new lawyer who has never drafted these documents has virtually no where to turn, but to the form books for hours and hours of unbillable research time.
The biggest problem for new lawyers is they did not learn how to try cases in law school. Rather, they are more equipped to argue an appeal in front the The United States Supreme Court then they are to handle a simple will contest, or personal injury matter. The bottom line is, in order for a new attorney to be efficient, they can either purchase one of these up to date, form generating software packages, be lucky enough to have a mentor, or put their dreams and aspirations on hold for two or three years, while working for a small practice. In the case of the young probate attorney, she decided to purchase the software, and was lucky to have one of the premier real estate and probate attorneys in the state as a mentor. However, not all new lawyers are so lucky, and if you are going to spend 30 hours a week researching what forms are needed to follow procedure, you will be hard pressed to find time to actually represent your clients, let alone conduct legal work that can be justified as billable hours.
The gist of all of this is that it would be highly advisable to look into the technology that is available today if you are a new lawyer, and in fact, even if you are an experienced lawyer, this technology allows you to stay current with any changes in the law and procedure for state courts in your document library.
The following article was drafted by Michael Goldstein, Esq. who writes select articles about technology for TurboLaw, a Massachusetts legal form software application.
Contract Limerick
April 6, 2006
From the fine folks over at the Volokh Conspiracy comes this limerick summarizing a contract dispute:
An ode to Cricket Alley Corp. v. Data Terminal Systems (from a poet in my Contracts II class):
Facts:
DTS sold registers to Cricket’s
To automate bookkeeping wickets.
The shop owner said, “Dang!
These won’t talk to my Wang.
We’re stuck with hand entered sales tickets.”Holding:
Cricket’s needs were expressed or implied.
On salesmen’s claims Cricket had relied.
Damage was foreseeable
And so we’re agreeable
Consequence relief can’t be denied.
Be sure to check out the comments, as there are a few other user-submitted limericks as well.
Wi-Fi in Traffic Court
August 3, 2005
Ernie The Attorney has an interesting story about how a laptop, a Wi-Fi wireless signal, and some quick thinking saved one person from a traffic violation.
What is E-Discovery?
June 30, 2005
Ernie The Attorney has a very interesting and informative write-up on what all the hubbub is regarding e-discovery. If you’re not sure what e-discovery really is, and why it might be a “hot topic” these days, you should definitely read this article.
LegalTech
June 27, 2005
Ernie The Attorney reports on his experiences at the LegalTech conference in Los Angeles. He has some interesting observations:
It’s too bad that more lawyers don’t attend conferences like this one: there were several great programs that required no special tech-awareness. In fact, the session about ‘Coping with E-Mail Overload’ was one of the most useful programs I’ve seen recently. Obviously, you don’t have to be a techie to understand that E-Mail is something that needs to be carefully managed.
Some of the other things he talks about are E-Discovery, software training (a touchy subject for many law firms, as we ourselves have seen), and the e-mail problem (too many e-mails, too little time).
All in all, it’s a very worthwhile read.
Unauthorized Computer Access; legally speaking
June 14, 2005
This article (which I found thanks to a link over at Bruce Schneier’s blog) is quite interesting. What exactly is “unauthorized” access, as far as computers are concerned?
If the answer seems clear-cut to you, you may want to read this article to see how the issue quickly becomes murky. As is often the case, old legal precedents don’t quite work when applied to new technology.
For more info on this subject, and some “historical” cases in the same sort of vein, see:
Remarks on Oregon vs. Schwartz
Computer or Crime? State of Oregon v. Randal Schwartz
LexisNexis Says 32,000 Profiles Stolen
March 10, 2005
From a Reuters story posted on Yahoo! News:
LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Data broker LexisNexis on Wednesday said that identity thieves have gained access to profiles of 32,000 U.S. citizens, prompting calls for better consumer protections after a rash of similar break-ins.
[...]
The information accessed included names, addresses, Social Security and driver’s license numbers, but not credit histories, medical records or financial information.
Click here for the full article.
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