Legal typeface: the letter of the law

How much thought do you put into the typeface that you use to draft documents? Or the typeface that features on your writing-paper or business cards? Or the layout of your written work generally? If the answer is “none whatsoever”, then you might want to reconsider.

Typography matters a very great deal, and it should matter especially to lawyers. After all, we spend a great deal of our professional lives writing, whether it is a short e-mail or a skeleton argument for a hearing in the Court of Appeal. Our writing is important. And that makes typography important; the clear, elegant, easy-on-the eye written expression of an argument is going to be better appreciated and more easily digested.

Comic capers

Let me give an example: I once received a draft settlement agreement drafted by an opposing lawyer that was set in Comic Sans. In case you don’t know what Comic Sans is, fire up Microsoft Word and have a look at