Briefly: Sweat the Small Stuff - It Matters

By Haynes Hansen and Eric Magnuson

February 22, 2022

The brief is done. You spent years working up the case, and months thinking through the legal arguments, chasing down every last citation as you wrote the appellate brief. Now it’s done, and all that’s left to do is file it and wait for the court to adopt it wholesale, right? Hold on. Even the best writer’s best work needs editing. After hours of staring at those pages, the details of the citations start to grow into each other, all that carefully coiffed legal argument begins to lose the plot-line, and the typos have grown like weeds — but the writer is too close to it to see the obvious. Yes, no matter how badly you would like that brief just to be done, it needs editing, and it needs to be edited by someone who didn’t write it. Here are some tips for those taking on the less glamorous—but always necessary—work of appellate brief editing.

The articles on our website include some of the publications and papers authored by our attorneys, both before and after they joined our firm. The content of these articles should not be taken as legal advice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or official position of Robins Kaplan LLP.

Disclaimer

Eric J. Magnuson

Partner

Chair, Appellate Practice
Pronouns: he/his

Haynes Hansen

Former Associate

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