Typography For Lawyers

Typography for Lawyers

A working reference distilled from Matthew Butterick's Typography for Lawyers (https://typographyforlawyers.com). It turns a document from typewriter output into professional typesetting. Use it to advise on, review, or apply typography to any legal or professional document.

The core idea

"Typography is the visual component of the written word" — and it exists for the reader, not the writer. Good typography makes text more effective: it conserves the reader's attention (a lawyer's scarcest resource) so more of it lands on the argument. It is not more important than good writing, but it makes good writing better — and bad typography quietly undercuts it. There's no separate "legal typography"; legal documents are held to the same standard as any professional publishing, because lawyers are, functionally, publishers. When a judgment call isn't covered below, favor more consistency with professional typography, not less. (The full reasoning, including the two "Laws of Typography," the em, and how far to push formatting in court, is in references/foundations.md.)

Start here: the highest-impact fixes

If you change nothing else, change these — they do the most work, in rough priority order. Most are page layout, because layout outranks font choice.

1. Fix the line length. Aim for 45–90 characters per line (~2–3 alphabets). Default 1″ margins give ~6.5″ lines that are too long. At 12 pt use 1.5″–2.0″ side margins. Control line length with margins, not indents.
2. Fix line spacing. Use 120–145% of point size, set with Word's "Exactly" option (a fixed point value) — not the "Single/1.5/Double" presets, which miss the range. If a court requires "double," that means exactly 2× the point size, not Word's "Double" preset (~15% too loose).
3. Body text 10–12 pt (11 pt is often ideal); experiment in half-point steps if unrestricted. 12 pt is not magic — it's a typewriter habit.
4. One space between sentences, never two. Curly quotes, never straight. Real en/em dashes, never --. These are the most visible tells of amateur work.
5. Never underline for emphasis (a typewriter relic) — use italic or bold (never both, always sparingly). Don't set paragraphs in ALL CAPS; it reads slower, so readers skip exactly what you meant to stress.
6. Separate paragraphs one way, not two — a first-line indent (1×–4× the point size) or space between paragraphs (4–10 pt), never both.
7. Turn on kerning (off by default; enable for 8 pt and up) and letterspace caps/small-caps by 5–12% (never lowercase).
8. Upgrade the font. Replace Times New Roman / Arial with a professional face; if you can't install one, at least move off the C- and F-list system fonts. See the font guidance below.

Reviewing or formatting a document — workflow

1. Identify the document type and its constraints. A court filing has rules (point-size minimum, margins, line spacing, sometimes a required font); a contract, memo, letterhead, or résumé does not. Read any governing court rule carefully — it usually leaves far more discretion than lawyers assume, and it sets minimums/maximums ("at least", "no more than"), not a fixed look. See references/practical-howtos.md → How to interpret court rules.
2. Design the body text first — font, point size, line spacing, line length. It's the bulk of the page and determines most of the appearance.
3. Apply the character-level fixes — quotes, spaces, dashes, symbols (§/¶ + nonbreaking space), ellipses. See references/type-composition.md.
4. Handle emphasis and headings — bold/italic sparingly, ≤3 heading levels, space above/below as the main emphasis, small caps for cross-references. See references/text-formatting.md.
5. Refine layout — margins, paragraph separation, lists, tables, rules, footnotes, page-break controls, line numbers. See references/page-layout.md.
6. Apply the type-specific recipe for that document. See references/sample-documents.md.
7. Deliver as a PDF (convert directly, never scan) so your fonts and layout survive. See references/practical-howtos.md → How to make a PDF.

Font choice — the quick answer

• Body text: use a serif — the traditional and still-best choice for body text.
• The clichés to replace: Times New Roman (no court actually requires it; it survives by habit) and Arial. Professional replacements cost under $200 and instantly upgrade every document. Two genuinely good free fonts: Charter and Cooper Hewitt.
• Butterick's own families (built for this): Equity (serif, made for lawyers), Valkyrie, Century Supra, Heliotrope (body serifs); Concourse (sans); Triplicate (a nice monospace); Hermes Maia and Advocate (display/headline).
• Combining fonts (the pairing question): most documents want one font; a second is the most you usually need; almost none tolerate a third. Serif+sans is not required — any two identifiably different fonts work. The reliable trick: pick two fonts by the same designer. Butterick's one named pairing is Equity (body) + Concourse (headings/labels). Give each font a fixed role; never switch fonts mid-paragraph.
• Full alternatives table for every overused system font, the A/B/C/F system-font tiers, licensing, and formats are in references/fonts.md.

Reference map

Load the file that matches the task; each is self-contained.

A few rules worth stating up front

• Design for the real reader — busy, skeptical, looking for a reason to stop reading — not the patient, fascinated reader you imagine.
• Use the smallest visible increment. Headings go 12 → 12.5/13 pt, not 14–15. Typography lives in fine differences; the gap between "not enough" and "too much" is small.
• Test visually. Print options side by side rather than deciding in the abstract.
• Embrace white space. "Work outward from the text, not inward from the page edges. If the text looks good, the white space will take care of itself."
• Judges get the last word on how a filing is formatted. Comply in good faith; never try to "correct" a judge's reading of the rules in a high-stakes matter.

This skill distills the freely available web edition of Matthew Butterick's Typography for Lawyers (https://typographyforlawyers.com). All credit for the underlying rules and examples belongs to Butterick; buy the book to support the work. The typefaces named as "Butterick's own" are his commercial MB Type fonts.